Recycling of Wind Turbine Blades

The ‘total cost of ownership’ is about to improve ...

**LINK**

https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-vestas-wind-technology-idUKKCN2CY0FA

MichaelG.

Well, I swan!

The Danes continue to punch above their weight.

Some blades contain wood, as well.

That staggering estimate of the mass of scrapped blades by 2050 - barely 30 years away - raises a lot of awkward questions itself. Such as -

How long does a blade typically last?- I appreciate this may be controlled by its location and typical weather conditions it experiences there.

Can they be refurbished or do the materials degrade in service?

Looking ahead beyond 2050, when petroleum becomes scarcer and less economical to find and extract, what and from what sources will be the raw-material origins of the non-metallic materials in wind-turbines and associated systems? (For new resins that will still be needed, insulating plastics, lubricating and hydraulic oils, paints.)

Just how "green" is this all going to be?

Has anyone really thought it all through?

I don't know. It takes energy to get the materials to make them, then energy to make the blades, energy to move them, to place them, to remove them, to ship them back, and, finally, to take them apart.

Might it not be easier to just use less energy?

I know that it's not a popular view these days; the current trend seems to be using more energy to solve "the climate crisis".

Gosh - that reads like it's a "Baah Humbug" moment!

See.. there's this thing that the wind turbine drives. It's called a generator and it generates electricity Since wind is generally free (apart from that produced by the consumption of beans etc.) a lot of electricity can be generated for just the cost and energy required to make, comission, decommission and dispose of the equipment. Fossil fuelled power stations have all those costs, but they also have the cost of fuel. A 1GW coal fired power station consumes about 2-2.5 million tonnes of coal a year...

Carbon Fibre waste has always been of concern. Many years ago someone I used to know had some parts made from offcuts of virgin carbon fibre pre-preg mat. Apparently a large percentage of the material ended up as waste in the manufacture of aircraft wings. It’s good to know this stuff can be recycled.

An old school mate of mine spent 12 years at Westlands repairing and rebuilding heliopter blades so it should be possible to do something to rebuild the leading edge ! Noel

Nothing wrong with that. Scrooge was all right until they brainwashed him.

George B.

Have any academics looked into the affect all these huge wind turbines across the planet have on the climate? ( I know studies have looked at issues with effects on migrating birds) What I'm droning on about is a sort of the 'butterfly effect' - each one causing a minute change in air flow and cumulatively 'adjust' winds that may affect climate subtley? perhaps just one tiny piece in the climate change jigsaw?

As the famous Captain Kirk used to frequently scream ' More power Scotty! ' to which the reply was ' She won't take it captain! ' , perhaps using less might be the only real answer in the end.

I think I need to get a life.

regards

Edited By Mike Hurley on 18/05/2021 13:26:38

An entirely reasonable hypothesis, Mike

... Yes, it needs serious investigation.

We still don’t understand what we are doing.

MichaelG.

I fear it's not just a matter of not understanding, Michael.

None of the proposed "green energy" ideas come without big problems of their own, and when put into full worldwide context beyond "simply" making ever more electricity as if that will solve everything, the questions that dare not be asked (or are asked only to be brushed aside) become even more stark.

.

I don't know if vast numbers of high-power wind-turbines could affect the weather, at least within a single weather system of the sort we see, roughly 1000 miles in diameter. More to the point perhaps is that as far as I can see, no-one who should ask that, has done so,

The power expressed by a straightforwards NE Atlantic depression or anticyclone is so vast that present rates of energy extraction by wind-turbines may well be too insignificant to attract attention. Yet with no apparent end in sight for plastering the country and surrounding seas with these machines, it is time the awkward questions are asked.

'

About 3 or 4 years ago I attended a public lecture on tidal-turbines. These are not barrage-scheme machines but the submarine equivalent of wind-turbines, anchored to the sea-floor in areas with steady but reasonably powerful tidal flows. It seems the UK is one of the world's leading countries, not in making these but R&D into them - but of course we've been told wind-"farms" - and covering real farms with solar panels - are the only way to go.

The speaker, from Bournemouth University if I recall correctly, showed some figures predicting known world coal and petroleum reserves' lives at present rates. They gave no more than about 100 years for coal, 50 for crude-oil. That obviously cannot account for deposits not yet found but the increasing difficulty hence cost of discovering and extracting these minerals, against dropping demand for fuels, suggests the likelihood of such discovery and extraction receding considerably even while the stuff is still quite abundant.

Whose figures though? Greenpeace's? The US or Chinese governments'? EDF's? No - a company you might expect to be a lot more optimistic about future mineral reserves, from their point of view: BP.

When you consider why I italicised minerals and fuels, you see what I mean about the sort of questions that dare not speak their name. Very, very basic questions, no more than school geography-lesson level - but ones that appear never to occur to most politicians, many campaigners and even that young lady from Sweden.

.

I think we are in agreement, Nigel

Mine was intended as a sweeping statement:

We are [i.e. mankind is] rushing around in a panic, because ‘The end of the World is nigh’ ... doing stuff without understanding the implications.

I sometimes think about the Myxomatosis disaster ...

MichaelG.

Yes!

I read a paper that said the impact over the first ten years of a massive investment in wind was worse than coal or oil. Over a thousand years the impact of wind power was massively less. It even looked at effects on atmospheric mixing and local climate change around turbines.

scitechdaily.com/wind-farms-cause-more-environmental-impact-than-previously-thought/

Neil