The Petiole of the Miriti Palm: A sustainable material for wind turbine blades?

Abstract

The Miriti Palm (Mauritia flexuosa) grows abundantly in the Amazon Region of Brazil. The petiole (PMP) that supports the leaves, has a density of about one-half of Balsa wood (BW), which is used in the manufacture of wind turbine blades. A further possible advantage of PMP is that harvesting does not kill the palm tree, in contrast to the harvesting of BW. Because the mechanical properties of PMP have not been measured, we determined the shear and tensile properties of 16 samples of PMP and BW to allow a preliminary assessment of PMP as a possible material for blades. The absolute shear and tensile strengths for BW are higher, but specific properties (normalized by the density) are similar and can favour PMP. Direct substitution of BW by PMP would reduce the weight of a typical large blade by around 2%.