Repurposing and recycling wind turbine blades in the United States

Martini, Ryan; Xydis, George

doi:10.1002/ep.13932

Cited by 12 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 30 publications

(58 reference statements)

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“…In this section, we calculated the CO 2 emissions when recycling or disposing of wind blade waste. Each country has its own characteristics with regard to waste disposal [7,8,15]. In the current study, Japanese data [48] were applied for the proportion of recycling types, whilst European data [10] were applied for the recycling process of wind blade waste for each recycling type.…”

Section: Co 2 Emissions During Recycling or Disposal At Each Life Cyc...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In addition, this study did not consider the secondary use of recovered GFRP/CFRP materials. Many studies have assumed that the recovered materials will be supplied to the market again after recycling GFRP/CFRP waste [10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18]; however, some issues exist. GFRP and CFRP are cross-linked, and thus, they cannot be reformed and the economic incentive for recycling is small [19].…”

Section: Co 2 Emissions During Recycling or Disposal At Each Life Cyc...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Wind blades are made from glass-fibre-reinforced plastic (GFRP) and carbon-fibre-reinforced plastic (CFRP), which are extremely lightweight, allowing for the production of strong structural components [10]. To date, several previous studies have discussed how wind blades can be disposed of at the end of their lifetime, including landfilling after cutting, incineration, thermal recycling (energy recovery), mechanical recycling, and chemical recycling [10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18]. However, given the physical properties of GFRP/CFRP, two challenges exist in the recycling of materials and making secondary use of recovered materials.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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CO2 Emissions from Blade Waste Treatments under Wind Power Scenario in Japan from 2021 to 2100

Nogaki,

Ito,

Nakakubo

et al. 2024

Sustainability

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Wind power generation has been introduced to reduce carbon emissions; however, recycling or recovering the waste of wind blades, which contain fibre-reinforced plastic, is difficult. Converting the recovered materials for secondary use is also difficult owing to the decreased strength and low material value. Many countries, including Japan, have not considered the future energy and CO2 emission scenarios, particularly CO2 emissions from wind blade waste. Based on these scenarios, Japan has planned to introduce large amounts of onshore/offshore wind power generation through 2050. Therefore, we aimed to evaluate quantitatively the total amount of waste and the global warming potential (GWP) from multiple blade waste treatment processes. Based on the average lifetime of blades (20–25 years), we found that the GWP of wind blade waste treatment in Japan may reach a maximum of 197.3–232.4 MtCO2eq by 2060–2065. Based on this lifetime, the wind blade treatment in 2050 accounted for 63.9–80.1% of the total greenhouse gas emissions in 2050. We also showed that the rise in CO2 emissions from the wind blade wastes would make up 82.5–93.6% of the potential reduction in the GWP, which is achievable by shifting from thermal to wind power generation.

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Section: Co 2 Emissions During Recycling or Disposal At Each Life Cyc...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Co 2 Emissions During Recycling or Disposal At Each Life Cyc...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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CO2 Emissions from Blade Waste Treatments under Wind Power Scenario in Japan from 2021 to 2100

Nogaki,

Ito,

Nakakubo

et al. 2024

Sustainability

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“…Because of this, they require several steps to become small enough to be remanufactured. This process traditionally uses heavy machinery with large saws and then manual labor to cut the blade into parts small enough to go into an industrial-scale shredder system [8,9,38,44]. This material is then ground up into granulate which is small enough to then be remanufactured using several recycling technologies.…”

Section: Mechanicalmentioning

confidence: 99%

Development of wind turbine blade recycling baselines in the United States

Korey,

Sproul,

Rencheck

et al. 2023

IOP Conf. Ser.: Mater. Sci. Eng.

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Over the past several years, the wind energy industry has received scrutiny regarding wind turbine blade (WTB) recycling due to the landfilling of WTBs caused by a lack of industrially viable recycling solutions. The amount of WTBs that will need to be recycled is set to increase in the United States as the deployment of wind energy is expected to rapidly grow to meet the nation’s energy goals by 2035. While significant progress has been made worldwide, it is still unclear which WTB recycling solutions would be the most cost and energy effective within the United States for the existing fleet of wind turbines. To guide researchers and industry with a clear path forward, a range of options for WTB recycling in the United States are modeled through development of baseline scenarios and the use of formal life cycle assessment (LCA). Model data have been collected through literature review, industry engagement, and expert opinion regarding current end of life practices and considerations surrounding equipment, labor, and logistics. A detailed baseline for WTB decommissioning processes has been developed and used to assess alternative approaches, such as on-site shredding to compare the impacts on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The developed LCA model and baseline scenarios for WTB recycling is used to assess the current WTB decommissioning practices in the United States along with emerging recycling pathways, including cement kiln co-processing and pyrolysis. Initial findings indicate that there are different approaches to decommissioning WTBs in the United States, each of which has unique implications for recycling. In light of this finding, additional results from the modeling will be used to better understand decommissioning practices and assist in making educated decisions on recycling pathways for the future. Throughout the analysis, focus was given to where international efforts might differ from the United States. WTB recycling is occurring worldwide, and different countries have different drivers for creating markets for recycled WTB materials. The contrasts and similarities between the United States and other countries offer insight to areas of opportunity that the United States could investigate and areas that can be readily transferred from existing solutions. By modeling and characterizing the current decommissioning practices and potential recycling solutions for the United States, a clearer vision will be created for pathways forward as to how to handle end of life WTBs to enable more efficient and cost-effective opportunities for material recovery from end-of-life WTBs.

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“…For example, taking advantage of the long length, WTBs can be lined up with overlapping tips and used as property walls, parts of a wall or cattle fence, land bridges over highways for wildlife, sound walls, pedestrian and bike ways, urban furniture, or parking lot shade shelters. 28 Therefore, repurposing is a priority for consideration, but there are big challenges in the disposal of end-of-life WTBs on a large scale. Recycling or recovery is considered an important way in which end-of-life WTBs can be effectively dealt with.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%