Vestas unveils novel wind blade recycling technology
A group of industry and academic experts led by wind turbine giant Vestas have unveiled new technology they claim will enable wind turbine blades to be fully recycled, with a view to presenting an industry-ready solution for widespread adoption within three years.
Vestas hailed the milestone as "the final technological step on the journey towards a fully recyclable wind turbine value chain", as it yesterday announced a new industry initiative to help advance adoption of the technology across the wider wind manufacturing sector.
At present, wind turbines are around 85-90 per cent recyclable, with wind blade materials making up the bulk of the remaining percentage that currently cannot be recycled due to challenges surrounding the reprocessing of thermoset composites.
But Vestas said the new CETEC or Circular Economy for Thermosets Epoxy Composites initiative aimed to present a commercialised "fully-scoped solution" for recycling these composites ready for industrial adoption by 2024.
lan Korsgaard Poulsen, head of sustainability and advanced materials in Vestas' innovation and concepts division, said the new technology was a significant step forward in eliminating waste and advancing a more circular economy across the wind energy industry.
"As global commitments to a net-zero future increase, it's absolutely crucial to ensure the wind industry can scale sustainably, which includes Vestas fulfilling our ambition to produce zero waste turbines by 2040," he said. "Leveraging this new technological breakthrough in chemcycling epoxy resin, the CETEC project will be a significant milestone in Vestas' journey towards achieving this goal, and in enabling a future where landfill is no longer required in blade decommissioning."
Partly funded by Innovation Fund Denmark (IFD), CETEC is spearheaded by Vestas with input from industrial and academic experts such as the Danish Technology Institute (DTI), Aarhus University, and epoxy producer Olin.
These same partners grouped together in an innovation initiative named DreamWind to develop the technology, which consists of a two-step process to firstly disassemble the thermoset composites into fibre and epoxy, and then use a 'chemcycling' process to break down these materials into base components similar to virgin materials.
Once the process is completed, these materials can then be used again to manufacture new turbine blades, thereby constituting "a new circularity pathway" for epoxy resin, according to CETEC.
Simon Frølich, PhD team manager at the Danish Technological Institute, said the development of CETEC's "novel technology" was "a gamechanger that will allow us to capture the value represented by each material stream in a new circular value chain".
And, if widely adopted, CETEC said the technology could also open up opportunities for other new recycling solutions across the industry, as well as holding significant potential for driving down costs as environmental regulations surrounding waste tighten in the coming years.
"Chemcycling of epoxy-based materials would allow deconstructing these highly stable polymer chains into molecular building blocks," explained Aarhus University professor Dr. Troels Skrydstrup. "These building blocks are easily processable and can be utilised to produce new epoxy, which will have the same quality as the original material. Avoiding the loss of valuable molecular complexity in such a way is a highly desirable concept and an important step to sustainable materials."
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