Firms Race To Recycle Blades From Wind Turbines

While about 90% of wind turbines are easily recyclable, their blades are not as they are made from fiberglass bound together with epoxy resin, a material so strong it is incredibly difficult and expensive to break down.

Photo Insert: Danish company Vestas said it had a “breakthrough solution” that would allow wind turbine blades to be recycled without changing their design or materials.

Most blades end their lives in landfill or are incinerated, Laura Paddison reported for CNN.

But in February, Danish wind company Vestas said it had cracked the problem. It said it had a “breakthrough solution” that would allow wind turbine blades to be recycled without changing their design or materials.

The technology breaks down old blades in a liquid to produce high-quality materials.

Claire Barlow, a sustainability and materials engineer at Cambridge University, told CNN that if this technology “could be a game changer.” Veolia, a French resource management company, turns old blades into an ingredient for cement production.

It shreds, sorts, and blends blade materials before sending them to cement kilns. This blend reduces the planet-heating pollution produced in cement manufacturing by 27%. The program has processed 2,600 blades so far.

Carbon Rivers, a Tennessee-based company, has worked with the US Department of Energy to help scale up its “pyrolysis” technology – a form of chemical recycling that uses very high heat in an oxygen-free environment.

The process produces glass fibers, which can then be used in new wind turbine blades, David Morgan, chief strategy officer at Carbon Rivers, told CNN.

In 2022, researchers at the University of Michigan said they had made a new resin for blades using glass fibers with a plant-derived polymer and a synthetic one, which could be recycled into ingredients for new turbine blades, laptop covers, power tools – and even gummy bear candies.

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