SSUCHY

• Hemp reinforcements: Develop and optimise competitive, high-performance hemp fibre reinforcements for composites, taking advantage of hemp’s availability, low cost and technical and environmental characteristics.
• Bio-based polymers: Develop biopolymers with improved physical properties, tailored for plant fibre composites and designed to remain recyclable and/or biodegradable.
• Lignin-derived monomers: Deploy novel fractionation processes for lignocellulosic biomass to generate tailored lignin-derived monomers suitable for high-grade polymer synthesis.
• Advanced functionalities: Use the intrinsic properties of plant fibres, and the diversity of plant and polymeric fibres in hybrid composites, to deliver load-bearing capacity, weight reduction, durability, vibration damping, fire retardancy and vibro-acoustic control.
• Demonstration: Prove the concept at demonstrator scale in ground transportation, aerospace and the acoustics niche.
• Value chain: Link wood-derived building blocks and the hemp value chain into a new, economically viable European bio-based composite value chain.

Results

• Hemp reinforcements: Developed two processing routes, one adapting flax scutching and hackling machinery and one using breaking and carding for disordered stems. Both produce low-twist rovings with a stiffness of 50-60 GPa and a strength of 350-600 MPa, comparable to hackled flax.
• Industrial production: Produced about 300 kg of roving yarn and more than 250 m² of woven fabric at industrial scale with Linificio e Canapificio Nazionale.
• New hemp products: Created new commingled hemp/PA11 yarns, quasi-unidirectional fabrics and coloured hemp composites (patented).
• Bio-based resins: Developed lignin-derived epoxy resins (BioIgenox and a bis-guaiacol resin) that matched or exceeded conventional DGEBA-based resins in bending properties, with a glass transition temperature above 100 °C. A bio-based flame retardant was also developed.
• Fully bio-based composites: Produced hemp-epoxy composites from the project’s own constituents, linking the wood-derived and hemp value chains.
• Moisture durability: Showed that processing non-dried fibres improves moisture durability. Nouryon launched two water-tolerant, cobalt-free curing catalysts (iron- and copper-based) commercially.
• Four demonstrators: 
  • Scooter frame (NPSP): weight cut by 59% to 13 kg, and bio-based content raised from 30% to 65%.
  • Loudspeaker (Wilson Benesch): tuned and damped the monocoque enclosure, leading to the commercial 3Zero biocomposite monocoque.
  • Aircraft cockpit dashboard panel (EADCO): produced in both flax and hemp versions.
  • Car floor and trim panels (Trèves): tested hemp sandwich panels.
• Education and dissemination: Trained 28 students, including six PhD students, ran the first European summer school on bio-based composites, and produced 33 scientific publications and one patent.

Impacts

• Environmental: Life-cycle assessments show up to 11% lower emissions for the scooter frame compared with steel, and up to 71% lower production-phase emissions for the loudspeaker compared with glass-fibre epoxy. Hemp reinforcement has a 27.3% lower global warming potential than glass fibre.
• Competitiveness: Strengthens the European bio-based composite sector through new materials and process technologies.
• Resource use: Promotes sustainable use of hemp, wood and their by-products, including low-value streams such as birch bark.
• Market uptake: Wilson Benesch has put the biocomposite monocoque into its premium loudspeaker range.
• Scale-up: The follow-on project SSUCHY-Next is scaling up hemp reinforcements and bio-based resins, aiming to build a 12.6-metre wind turbine blade that is at least 90% bio-based.
• Policy: Supports Europe’s competitiveness, strategic autonomy and sustainability goals.

Longitudinal harvest for hemp fibre production