‘Brief burst of intense heat’ could give hard-to-recycle wind turbine blades a second life
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Wind power has been described as one of the “cheapest and most scalable solutions” to the climate crisis – but there is growing concern about its boom.
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Wind turbines scattered across Europe and its waters are designed to withstand some of the harshest conditions, from intense UV rays to strong gusts of wind, extreme temperatures and even lightning.
While around 85-90% of a wind turbine’s total mass can be recycled, the durability of the blades makes it difficult to reprocess the remaining elements.
Wind turbine blades clutter European landfills
As a result, many turbine blades end up in landfills once decommissioned, typically after 20 years of service, or are incinerated.
Annual waste from decommissioned blades in Europe is expected to increase from 20,000 tonnes in 2025 to 55,000 tonnes by 2030, as older fleets reach the end of their life.
WindEurope, the European wind industry association, introduced a voluntary industry-wide landfill ban, which came into force last year, to combat the problem.
The association is urging EU policymakers to enshrine the ban in formal legislation, arguing that this would further accelerate the development of sustainable recycling technologies.
Wind turbines experience Joule flash heating
Researchers have recently discovered a new way to give hard-to-recycle wind turbine blades a second life – by subjecting them to a “brief burst of intense heat”.
The study, published in the scientific journal Chem Circularity, found that “joule flash heating” can transform blades – often made from silica-containing fiberglass and carbon-rich polymer resin – into silicon carbide and graphene, two valuable materials for manufacturing.
The slides were heated to approximately 2,000°C in a few seconds; At such high temperatures, carbon can react with silica to form silicon carbide, a hard, heat-resistant material.
Carbon can also reorganize into graphene under these conditions, a material known for its strength and ability to conduct heat and electricity.
The research team found that adding the broken blades to other materials before heating made the new material more useful for creating new rotor blades.
Just 0.3 percent (by weight) of the recovered materials was able to make the resin stiffer and stronger and improve its resistance to deformation by 27 percent under tension and 9 percent when bent.
“The mixture of silicon carbide and graphene can be reincorporated into the resins of new wind turbine blades, improving their mechanical and thermal properties,” explains lead author and chemical and environmental engineer Bing Deng of Tsinghua University, China.
“It’s more than recycling: it’s upcycling. We transform something that has little value into something that is worth much more.”
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