Do you have any ideas what other things we could build with old wind turbine blades?💡 P.S. We would love to hear your thoughts about Planet A: what do you like and what don't you like? Let us know in this survey 👉surveys.dw.com/c/dwplaneta
Turbine blades can be recycled for glass fiber (glass-to-glass). They're also a viable feedstock for renewable diesel. The same goes for fiberglass boat hulls.
@@ARepublicIfYouCanKeepIt Well, environmentalists look like they are never satisfied. And thus playing the game of the Corporations in getting The People used to live under-graded lives with very little improvement in comfort due to so-called shortages. 🤔 Said shortages mainly due to poor management, lack of investment, funding and maintenance. Etc.
I don't understand why this is a problem at all!?! We need to build "energy islands" in the North Sea. So drop one zillion blades in a big pile, add a little sand and concrete, presto! That should use up the next 20 years of EOL blades. Then, we need to build up the mountains (well, hills) in Scotland and other places to construct pumped-hydro storage. That will dispose of maybe 50 years of blades. And if that's not enough, there is always an ongoing req for big sturdy bulky strips of non-polluting solid to make structures with.
I've worked for the one of the largest wind turbine developers and operations companies, for years, and we recycle 100% of our blades to concrete companies who grind them down and use the glass fiber to reinforce concrete, which makes concrete MUCH stronger. It's a perfect match as we'll continue making wind turbines for may decades, and will continue making concrete. I have recycled wind turbine blade glass fiber mix in the concrete of my own residential wind turbine foundation, in my own backyard. Full cycle life!
is using these fibers not the same as the "coral"reef solution that had in the 70s in the USA? en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_Reef there they had the solution to recycle car tires in a eco friendly way, it was the future... which turned out to be a complete disaster. the concrete with the fibres in it, is to me, dangerous waste. when the concrete is shredded at the end of lifetime of a structure the fibers will come free. maybe the fibers will come free after some years being exposed to the elements and people can breathe in the fibers.
Concrete comes in many forms with many additives for even more purposes. If a recycled turbine blade can be used instead of new glass fibers for reinforcement, i don’t see why that should be not prefered.
@@saschathinius7082 One can use the fibers for cement production. They become the cement in a chemical reaction. The fibers do not exist anymore after that.
True - coal powered generators are not claiming to be environmentally friendly so they don't need to worry about end of life recycling and the impact on their image. However it seems that the critics of renewable energy don't seem to mind if coal, oil, and gas energy facilities are environmentally friendly, it seems like this is only a concern with regard to renewable energy sources.
Coal fired power stations have at least double the life of wind turbines and can be refitted, they are far more efficient so far fewer are needed. Even with all these turbines we will always need fossil fuel power, wind energy is intermittent and unstable so the traditional power stations are still always running to even it out on the grid and to come into play when there is no wind or it is too windy so the turbines are shut down, the wind companies get paid a subsidy for turbines not turning, one of the reasons the price of electricity will never come down.
@judithmackay7158 I am not sure where you are from. Where I am from, Australia, I think the last coal-fired power station was completed in 2005. They just aren't economically viable anymore, despite having a lot of political support. To my knowledge, new large solar and wind are not receiving any government subsidies. So unless coal gets cheaper, which seems unlikely given it is a mature technology, it will slowly decline. Large scale batteries are currently mushrooming here.
@@judithmackay7158 You didn't address the dirty side of coal burning which is typical of being selectively environmentally concerned about renewables. Turbines get turned off mainly because the grid has too much power at that point in time, something you can't really do with coal i.e. you can't turn it off and on at will. UK electricity price is governed by the price of gas, not renewables.
Insane to think that most people can’t even put their trash in the right bin at home but are then bothered by this. Definitely about the trash and not just about finding anything that can be criticized about renewable wind energy
I would have agreed with your statement... IF putting trash into the right bin actually worked~ Because majority of those separate bins got collected into the same container and go to the same old landfill (or shipped to Asia to be party separated & reused). Recycling en masse is a scam. Recycling plastic is NOT financially valuable for companies & cannot be truly done (you get more inferior product); thin plastics is NOT recyclable at all (i.e. bags) because machines cannot process it (it got stuck in them).
I would have agreed with your statement... IF putting trash into the right bin actually worked~ Because majority of those separate bins got collected into the same container and go to the same old landfill (or shipped to Asia to be party separated & reused). Recycling en masse is a scam. Recycling plastic is NOT financially valuable for companies & cannot be truly done (you get more inferior product); thin plastics is NOT recyclable at all (i.e. bags) because machines cannot process it (it got stuck in them).
The average US household generates 20lbs of trash per day. So in less than 5 years each house is landfilling the equivalent of 3 modern wind turbine blades. But these whining haters are concerned about wind turbine blades?!?
You know why? It’s because most garbage isn’t recyclable and it all ends up at the same landfill. At least a landfill produces methane to be used as a fuel. Fiberglass doesn’t break down.
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If only there were equally directed campaigns for the recyclability of other industries. For instance, why aren't there as frequent news 'articles' concerned with recycling of heavy industry machinery, cars, airplanes and ships. A cynic might be left wondering if someone is paying for these concerns to focus only on green industries and look past all the industries fuelled by oil and gas...
Exactly - there’s never an argument to ask how one goes about recycling a coal or gas power plant - even a nuclear plant uses tonnes of concrete and fossil fuels to be built and operate and even to decommission, yet anything renewable has to be greener than green as if the lifetime benefits aren’t somehow enough (that’s not to say that turbines shouldn’t be fully recycled- it’s just another plus point)
@@kakikakakukaku Not necessarily. A lot of green opponents use arguments that ignore relativity. They point out any environmental impact at all for renewables while ignoring how they compare to existing systems. Essentially, making perfect the enemy of good. Example, one common point is that wind turbines kill thousands of birds. But that ignores the millions already killed by cats and windows. Death by wind turbines are a drop in the ocean compared to existing causes of bird mortality. Another example, is pointing out that turbines and solar panels use fossil fuels to make and transport. While true, ignores how that compares to existing coal and gas. According to studies by NREL, renewables despite manufacturing and disposal, are still magnitudes cleaner than coal and gas. Source: NREL, Lifecycle Harmonisation
Correct, if only coal and fossile gas power plants were dealing with their waste (CO2, ashes and other micro particules), we wouldn’t be in such mess. Instead, they just dump it into the atmosphere. At least wind, solar and nuclear energy do try to manage their wastes
I wonder if anybody could figure out how many kilowatt hours are produced by a typical generator blade over its lifetime and how that amount of waste would compared to waste from other generating systems per kilowatt-hour.
@@johnsteading8610 id expect them to last a lot more than 20 25 years and could probably handle another wind turbine being installed on them, no? Don't see buildings with concrete foundations having them replaced every thirty years
@@roberthiggins6401 if you go look at the titles of their videos about wind power, they're all negative. Now, I don't know if they have any positive news at all, but that doesn't seem balanced. Edit: of course they have positive news about coal and oil as well, except when the news are about opposition to those.
Wind turbines have always been products with a high recycling rate - around 80-95 percent of a wind turbine is completely recyclable. The only challenging part are the blades, which use fiberglass as their material, and have therefore been more difficult to recycle. In Finland, a solution to this challenge has been sought in the KiMuRa project, where a collection and processing network for plastic composite waste was created in which it's recycled 100% in the manufacture of cement, partly as energy and partly as raw material. The first wind turbine platforms went into circulation through the new system during the past summer in 2021.
@@simonbowman6206 Check your facts, is all I can say. There's also a Swedish company Stena Recycling, that operates in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Poland, Italy, and the US.
@@simonbowman6206how is it not a green solution? Using shredded turbine blades means less cement that damages the environment and less ressources needed. Using those blades after 25 to 30 years of producing electricity is exactly the green solution we need
@@simonbowman6206 Loits of places are doing it, and the US wasn't the first either. As for not green, it reduces the CO2 output when making cement by about 40%.
This really highlights the difference between these windmill companies and oil companies. An oil company would try to hide this kind of thing and play off how impactulfull it really is. Wind is saying "yeah, we have a problem here so lets solve it for a better tomorrow".
It's not just any sand, it has to be a specific kind of sand for it to have good material properties. It's unlikely that the blades are replacing this specific ingredient, seems that it substitutes for lime and/or gravel.
@@vidyagaems4063 it's neither, It's used as an additive. The concrete is exactly the same with sand, lime and gravel and if needed rebar too it doesn't increase its strength by anything significant, either however, by adding glass or carbon fibre to it, it prevents the small cracks forming thus preventing water ingress to the rebar that causes it to rust thus increasing the lifespan of the concrete it also looks nicer. practical engineering has an excellent TH-cam video on exactly this.
@@randomcow505 @vidyagaems4063 you guys are both sorta correct but i've never understood the clasification of addative vs main ingredient in concrete, it's all gotta work together. As for the type of sand, that is mainly about the gemetry. Rounder grains make it easier for cracks to bypass that grain, so filiments are not very round, they can be round in one part but very pointy in general on the ends, is like little bits of rebar.
@@vidyagaems4063 btw it's also about energy, you can take the wrong sand and make it into the right sand, or take some waste mat like this and turn it into something physically identical to or better than the target sand, all the atoms are still here and in theory with enough energy and ingenuity humans can arrange all the atoms on earth how ever we see fit... just not by burning oil.
Wind power is undeniably vital for a cleaner future, but we can't ignore the elephant in the room - recycling those massive turbine blades. It's inspiring to see efforts and innovation in action, from burning off plastics to turning them into cement.Kudos to Siemens Gamesa and Vestas for working on recyclable blades! Let's keep pushing for a greener future
But 80-90% of wind turbines are easily cyclable. Evsn though blades look massive they really light and empty inside. If you look by mass it's not massive
I love when people complain about putting blades in landfills. I haul dumpster for a living and each day the transfer station alone does 600 tons of trash. That not including the other 9-12 places that are taking in just as much and more. West michigan i would say is around 8000 tons a day in the 5 landfills i can think of.. that just trash construction waste etc... so how bad is blades really compared to just 1 day of trash... the future $$$$ will be in cleaning up landfills. I bet they get big government grants(aka our tax dollars) along with all the other materials they recycle and make billions on top of getting paid now...
I'm sure all the world's wind turbines blades would fit in the abandonned open-pit mines. Fill them up, put a layer of soil and plant trees. Voilà! Two problems solved.
This is a good overview of the problem with some interesting techniques coming up. But one thing about scale... At 2:40, 43 million tons of used wind turbine blades by 2050 is nothing compared the current worldwide _annual_ emissions of 37 *billion* metric tons of hazardous fossil fuel carbon dioxide right now! And carbon dioxide is a highly diffuse high entropy gas that cannot be collected. OTOH, the epoxy and fiber material of a blade is much more inert and is solid so can be stored for later use when recycling techniques have advanced.
Since wind turbines were built to last forever, why not use them as part of seawalls or for sewers? Concrete will only last for around one lifetime before losing all of its strength due to oxidation and salts.
Wind turbines currently are built to last a lifecycle of up to 25 years. 🌬 In about 3:50 minutes to the video we discuss the possibilities of old blades in cement production.
Seawalls ? Not the best idea, normaly you just use big stones, because the waves not just crush against the stones, the waves lose their strength in all this space between these stones. If there would be big waves and you walking there and the waves would hit against solid walls you would be wet.
Fiberglass would be rapidly eroded by sand abrasion (infact errosion is the main life time limiter on blades), so a marine reuse senario is not viable. Sewer piping needs to sealed and blades while hollow inside are not pipes and most certainly not the right size, so they would need to be broken down and reformed, but fiberglass loses tensile strength when you break the fibers (for that matter everything made of fiber, be it carbon, glass or cotton will lose tensile strength if the fiber is shreded, it's the nature of fiber after all).
@@kennethferland5579 No, on the contrary the sand abrasion etc. is exactly what you need, so marine reuse scenario is an excellent use case. You need a big pile of sand. End of.
The first turbine recycling plant will be open next year in Denmark, with another four to follow in different EU countries. I read the process for doing this was masterminded at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow.
The problem with this concept is how expensive and energy intensive it is to transport turbine blades. The idea of loading up thousands of blades and literally transporting them 100's to potentially 10,000's of kilometers to the nearest recycling facility is insane. Maybe feasible in DK where it's a small country. But somewhere like the US or China, good luck making that business case make sense. My money is on mobile equipment that can travel to a site and grind up the blades into an aggregate for concrete and asphalt. The very best case used as aggregate in the foundations of a wind facility repowering project. Or worse case they get landfilled, but take up little space. In the case of landfill, grinding is probably unnecessary. Because blades are hollow and can be cut into smaller pieces and stacked. Requiring less energy than grinding but still easier to transport to the nearest landfill. The reason I don't care about recycling these things is this... Let's break things down. Let's compare wind energy to say coal. Let's use a 200MW coal power plants production and compare that that a 450MW wind power plant because of lower capacity factors of wind turbines. Let's say the turbines are 4MW each, which is pretty average onshore these days. That's a wind farm of 112 wind turbines that have a design life of 25 years. After 25 years there will be 3000 tons of blade and fiberglass waste needing disposal. That's a big number. Now where does coal stack up? To produce the exact same amount of energy as the wind power plant. The coal power plant will need to burn 44,000,000 tons (yes millions). Producing 4,000,000 tons of highly toxic and even radioactive fly ash. Furthermore the plant will also release 48,000,000 tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. 52,000,000 tons of pollution wreaking havoc on our environment. Compared to 3000 tons of relatively benign fiberglass waste which can safely be landfilled at worst. That's 0.0056% the amount of waste. Just some food for thought before worrying about the wind industry for the waste it creates.
Such an interesting and important topic! I absolutely love the idea of repurposing discarded wind turbine blades. One innovative way I can think of is to use these blades to create eco-friendly boats, perhaps similar to Pacific proas. Imagine sailing the seas in vessels that not only harness the power of the wind but also promote sustainability and reuse. It's a fantastic way to contribute to a greener future while fostering creativity in design.
@@H4N5O1O my idea is to reuse the material from blades to build sailboats for people who go fishing and do it with the power of sails no fancy yachts. So it's yes not perfect but not in one hand putting blades to ground or grind them to pulp. If you can go fishing without engine it mean that you don't need to fish so much. You don't need to fish for fuel or parts for engine. It's like taking a perfect tree and grind it to make MDF sheet from it. It's stupid.
Fiberglass in concrete makes the concrete much more flexible and less prone to cracking, far less to no steel reinforcing is needed if fiberglass is added to the concrete. Burning the waste makes perfect sense to me, it is the same as all the other waste in the world. I do love those bridges and play structures though, reusing and repurposing ought to come before recycling and incineration
how to deal with this: Giving the nutjobs that claim wind energy is not renewable no air time, put the blades in a landfill or repurpose them and focus research on other things that are more critical
Gamesa has been recycling wtb for years into medical teaching devices exp skeleton... lower and upper g.i. tract.. exploted skull with and with out brain.. some of the fiberglass has been used in concrete for a lighter and stronger base mix. Before any wtg is erected there must be a contingency plan in place for the disposal and or recycling of the wtg after it's useful Life of about 20 years this contingency plan is back up by a surety bond for this reason. Unless you have spent 20 plus years dealing with renewables from the base to the light switch and from actual working from erection to corporate office you will never receive the complete or correct truth. If it does go to the landfill the cost are astronomical due to weight.. composition of the material which is some metal.. basa wood and fiberglass All of which is considered industrial waste.
It’s great to see progress in this area. Hopefully that’ll become the new standard. Thank you DW. Dumping things that have a long life cycle in landfills is never a sustainable solution. Especially when you’re talking about “green energy” products.
What is wrong with leaving them in a landfill? Over time it will become more and more profitable for a company to learn how to recycle them as new technologies get invented. Companies aren't going to disappear when there is no more plastic or oil left, they will find a way to make money recycling trash.
After videos like this I have the urge (sadly not the motivation) to start learning waste management. This problem is way above me. So I only have some really naive thought like: We love glass and metal, because you just reheat and reshape it. The reason archeologists barely find any glass relics, because it either brakes down to sand size or you just melt it and reblow it. Matals are the "same" But I'm sure on molecular level experts will explain that this isn't that simple either. So we have plastic, that made out of oil. Why is it so hard to liquify plastic and just remold it to a new form? Years ago Ive watched videos about anaerob burning of plastic can brake the chains and brake it back to a petrol. Wonder what happened with that experiment? Those ended up that its not viable as fuel, because the quality is worse and would ruin engines. But what about creating new plastic? There are another experimental steps with plastic eating bacterias. So again, feed the tubnines to bacterias, and use the "poop" :D to remold stuff. My concern is to shred things to pieces and use it for construction (houses and roads) we just postpone the problem and just shrug it under the carpet as mcroplastic. And we have the economical dilemma: When they say, its doable, but expensive. This is at least promising, because when it has a price label, the supply and demand will eventually shift. a) Either with technological improvement: same way solar panels became cheap, because engineers made it viable. In 10 years prices dropped by 90% because they found better materials, better way of mass producing, or simply make it viable for mass production. b) supply and demand: eventually raw materials will deplete. When the barrel of oil price will hit a certain point, suddenly every landfill site will turn into a "mine" and these "expensive solution" will become the extraction method.
Some new info for you,,, a wind farm in my area was sold to the landholder after it had been in operation for 23yrs. Now the landholder has since sold his farm because he found the costs to maintain the wind farm was larger than the returns it earned. SO THE INSTALLERS RECOVERED THE COSTS TO FIT THE SYSTEM AND A HANDSOME RETURN ON TOP & NO COSTS TO REMEDIATE THE AREA AND PROFIT FROM ITS SALE !! yes thats the game watch it roll out in your area
Glass fibers has been produces for over 50 years for pipes, pipelines, pools, boat hulls, car bodywork, house panelling, etc. And hundreds of times more waste is generated there than from wind rotors. In Europe, large glass fibre parts are burned as fuel in cement factories.
What's the problem (if any) of refurbishing / repairing old blades to use in newer wind turbines? The designs are changing all the time? You can't repair the structural integrity to close to what it was when it was operating well?
The blades get longer. 20 year old blades cannot be used for newer more powerful turbines. Sometimes old blades, in good condition, get used as replacement on windturbines of the same type. As long as there is no structural damage, blades can be repaired and that is done regularly. Lifetimes of 30 years are possible, but that costs money. But after 20 years new turbines are threetimes as powerful. Currently it is more efficient to replace the whole turbine. In the future, if the power increase slows down, it might be a good idea to keep them running for longer.
Composite structures degrade over time. Resins get brittle, fibers crack and delaminate. Blade design is indeed constantly improving and blades get bigger because the turbines efficiency increases faster than the size does. Also the technology becomes obsolete. Is a 25-30 year old car viable for sale today? The companies that own these wind farms are looking to upgrade using more productive equipment.
A move away from fiberglass is certainly needed, an aluminum skinned blade analagous in construction to an airplane wing would be be both more durable, recyclable and modular allowing for easier transport and assembly. Fiberglass made sense when blades were tiny but it's long past the point when other materials should have been used, but the industry always found it easier to stick with what was known and push up the size of molds and blade transporters incrementally rather then switch to different materials.
Both mechanical stresses and weather conditions; extreme temperatures, uv-radiation, rain etc. will eventually leave their mark on the blades as well. 🌬
It is mainly dust and water. After years of exposure the protective layer can get damaged, which leads to further damage. If the blade is well maintained, the damage can be spotted in time and be repaired. Old blades can even be aerodynamicly optimized in the process.
It might be a silly question, is it possible to use aerospace grade Aluminium for the wind turbine blades or an mixed alloy of some sort? Also we can use off-shore sea based wind turbines close to the shore, so it does not make the green land space look ugly!
Not at all! Aerospace-grade aluminum could be theoretically possible, the combination of cost, fatigue resistance, and manufacturability makes composite materials more ideal. What is being investigated at the moment are different wood compounds such as wood-epoxy or wood-fibre-epoxy. Off-shore wind is a great topic we have videos on! 🌬️ "Is offshore wind the energy of the future?" th-cam.com/video/IsUBq3BM8rU/w-d-xo.html "Floating wind turbines: Offshore energy's secret weapon" th-cam.com/video/El4kHkJ7ITs/w-d-xo.html
It will be very useful to cut Wind turbine blades into House and home paneling and insulation materials since they are mostly in shape to be directly used in their construction like they are currently used for bridges, walkways/overhead walkways, and parks. The material and processing costs of the blades will be quite lower in the construction industry in comparison to going full blade recycling to its base materials and compounds overall.
Silly straw man argument. Yes, everything in life in an ideal world could/should be 100% sustainable. The real arguement is comparing total damage made by existing systems of power generation. In other words, what is NOT recyclable/sustainable when comparing existing fossil fuel systems vs current wind turbine systems. The system should be viewed by ALL products required to extract, produce, transport the energy source from its extraction/generation site to its distribution site. How many parts of an oil transportation ship will never be recycled? How much energy is used to create fossil fuel transportation? Landfill is an interesting problem all on its own, much of which has almost no statistically relevant correlation to the disposal of turbine blades.
It does rather remind me of the outraged people saying that wind turbines kill birds. Technically true, yes... but domestic cats kill more. By a few orders of magnitude. It's just an excuse from people who have gotten over-invested in the 'culture war' and think they found an argument to own the libs.
In other words, perfect is the enemy of good. And a lot of renewable opponents make the fallacy of pointing any environmental impact at all while ignoring the relative impact compared to our existing coal and gas plants.
Wind power is neither clean, nor cheap. It requires equal capacity of balancing power with heavy turbines (eg. coal, gas, oil, hydro or nuclear). The cost per KWh is about 5 times higher than for nuclear. CO2 per produced KWh is 5-15 times that of nuclear, depending if you include emissions from balancing power or not. Plus the microplastics; about 62 kg. per turbine/year! Plus the noise and shadow reflexes that pester life quality and property values for humans. And so on. It's a trendy gimmick. Build nuclear breeding plants instead.
But what about the initial construction costs? And decommissioning old plants, that also adds to the total expense? Check out our channel for multiple videos on nuclear. ☢️ Here's one to start with 👉 th-cam.com/video/9X00al1FsjM/w-d-xo.html
@@DWPlanetA A nuclear plant is far more expensive to build than a wind turbine of any size. But since nuclear plants today have a life span of about 80 years, the cost per produced KWh is much smaller than that for wind (+gas etc. back up power/regulation power). Even a life span of 40 years (older plants), plus huge waste storage taxes, like here in Sweden, gives cheaper electricity than wind. Wind power, combined with closing several nuclear plants, has derailed the Swedish electricity grid. Once probably the cleanest, cheapest and most stable in the world. 50% nuclear, 50% hydro. Now total volatility. From minusprices to high prices, 10 times that of before. No industry can work under such conditions = deindustralization. In Germany even worse due to even more wind and less nuclear. They have reopened their old coal plants(!!) due to this. So the "climate friendly" wind politics --> much more coal/CO2 emissions. France has about 60 reactors. Their prices are many times lower than those in Germany. Nuclear is the most effective, climate friendly, safe, and cheap form of energy production, except hydro power. One can like or dislike, but that is a fact. And breeding technology will enhance that even more.
@@DWPlanetA I watched your video. Recognize much, and question some. Germany have had to reopen several coal power plants due to shutting down their very safe nuclear plants. Sky rocketing energy prices, which affect all neighbouring countries in the EU.I read the other day that Germany now have some 150-ish coal power plants running. In the name of "climate"... Now they are going to tear down a village from the 12-hundreds - to expand the coal mining. I want to give you this video, by a serious and well read people emulator and entrepreneur (one can choose english texting): th-cam.com/video/w-g5kZ6KLbo/w-d-xo.htmlsi=MPZBHQ6QjBZQi8CH
We've done multiple longer videos on solar. Please check out our channel and subscribe for new videos every Friday! Here is one of them: 🌞 "How green is solar energy really?" 👇 th-cam.com/video/EWV4e453y8Y/w-d-xo.html
As said by another user on the another video about the same topic, "My first thought when they say "used to make concrete" was as an aggregate alternative or filler, like how fiberglass is added to some mixes. Nope. Burning." lol
Well, you missed out on Vattenfalls latest trials of wooden windmills. Made of wood the way you'd build yachts with. Much more resilient to strong wind and vibrations too, due to natural elasticity avoiding breakeages. And of course fully recycleable. Promising.
Very tall. Check it out online. Anyway, here in northern Friesland some parts of those old windmills are being used as small huts and windshields for our sheeps ;-)))
@@susannepeters5886 A: They are building only the tower from wood B: the wood is laminated C: while using wood saves CO2, it is not better at recycling, as the towers are usually made from steel anyway and the question is how long that woodden tower will last D: the first turbine built is just a 30m tower with a 500 kW turbine... E: admittedly they are currentl building a 2 MW, which is serious business, but we will see how long it will last
Sure... nothing proven yet. Anyway, I do welcome any innovation and will not condemn or despise new ways until proven wrong. Constructive critisism fine. Love open minds. Only way forward. We're the country of poets, thinkers and engineers :-) are we not? Dream, think and realize.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a big enthusiast of recycling, but what worries me about using "off the shelf" chemicals is that most of the dissolving chemicals we have readily available today are really harmful to human health and the environment, so some investment we'll need to go into preventing leaks and whatsoever. Let's see, I just hope we don't repeat the same mistakes over and over again, like "oh, that's too costly" or "it's more economically feasible to just build a new one from scratch than closing the production cycle". Those are the very kind of arguments we have been listening to for decades in the nuclear industry that have twarthed attempts to fully recycle the spent fuel instead of just having them lying down in deep repositories. For a real and fast climate transition, I do believe the capitalist mindset has to change, and costs should reflect the abiotic depletion (ADP) consequences of choosing not to recycle.
Can glass be recycled into its constituent ingredients? Grinding down wind turbine blades I would consider acceptable so long as the energy for it is from renewable sources. We could also try to improve the efficiency of this. We can also try too make use of more manual labour.
Kills too many birds and fish. Wears out probably in just 10 years, not 25 years. Blades recycled are more expensive than non-recycled. Takes up farm land. We need all the farmland we can get. Solar panels are better, because they cool the waters which produces more fish. And solar panels that are not over lakes and oceans are distributed over land that can't be farmed.
Kills less birds and fish than fossil fuels. Windturbines can run fine for 20 years, some even for 25 and 30 years. The oldest runs for over 40 years. Farmland is rarely used and the pillar itself does not need much space. And solar panels can be found on roofs and unused land. One does not need farms. But some farming works well together with solar energy.
@@old-pete Solar roofs are the most inefficient method of energy. Turbines do break down in just 10 years. You do need more farming. There are 8 billion people on the planet soon to be 9 billion. I pretty much disagree with everything you said. What does work are these new kind of turbines that circle around about a 1/4 of a mile. New technology. It's about 30% cheaper and more efficient. Solar panels break down very quickly, e.g. hail, rocks, animals. The only solution is new types of wind farms that nobody knows about.
@@Parture Solar roofs work quite well, as one can save grid costs. Your information about windturbines seems to be outdated by at least 40 years. The population increase should be reason enough that one cannot supply fossil based power to all of them. Solar panels last easily for 30 years, some even 40 years, as they have no moving parts. Solar panels usually come with hail protection.
@@old-pete Solar roofs are incredibly inefficient. They need to be major solar farms to maximize efficiency. The new type of wind farm is new technology; it's quite amazing. We can't jump to fossil fuels all at once. It will take decades so solar and wind are supplemental for now. Patience. Solar panels break down quite fast; you can observe this in lots of youtube videos. Solar gets hit by all types of objects so it has a surprisingly short life, not to mention they are rendered useless covered by dirt losing its impact. You don't seem to understand what's going on.
@@Parture They are not inefficient for the owners of these roofs. Nobody plans to leave fossil fuels all at once. That is why some countries started 50 years ago. And I have never seen solar panels breaking quickly. I know people who have them on their roof for over 20 years and all reports agree on that.
Great video! What about re-using blade materials in disposable technology currently using plastics? In-ear headphone cases? Smartphones? Television housings?
Cement is a great idea. Making it easely reciclable is the G.O.A.T but, worst case scenario... just store it. Scale will make it more economically viable to find uses.
Seems like the blades could be cut into structural beams for housing and other types of buildings. Yes, the blades are curved, but there are relatively long straight sections too. And I know that the blades have relatively thin stressed skin and aren’t solid.
I dunno, I dont think its healthy to play to the concerns of corporations who are so willing to look past far more harmful industries. Sky News Australia seems like they just wanna grab at low hanging fruit. If we're already recycling 90%, thats a heck of a lot better than we can say about most things. Like you said, the share of turbine blades in trash by 2050 is so tiny. I would just put innovation towards reducing cost at that point.
if you can recycle the old blade it also means that the blade is worth more money, which is in a roundabout way making it a better investment so its "cheaper" thats the main reason the companies do this, the customer will buy the blade that he can later recycle over a normal blade...
You can't recycle the 8 billion tons of coal that are burned ever year, either. Turbine blades, while definitely a blemish, are hardly a 'gotcha' for fossil fuels. But, I'm glad to see progress being made, and that there's so much effort to remedy the blemish!
What should we do with turbine blades? 1) Never in a landfill 2) Until we have something better, burn it and use the energy. 2b) Carbon fibre should burn, glass fibre is basically rock and can be used in concrete. 3) If we can build new turbines/ cars / houses and so on, that is of course the best
Not a word is mention about micro plastics in this video. These blades while in use throws of a lot of micro plastics due to erosion. This goes directly into nature and is absorbed by everything that lives. Offshore turbines are even worse due to salt and stronger wind. In an estimate from Sweden they reckoned that their 4000 turbine or so have produced about 270 tons of micro plastic, only beaten by artificial grass on football fields.
@@old-pete The paint doesn’t stop the spread of micro plastics since gel coat have been used since the first fiberglass propellers . The estimated 270 tons from the land based turbines are not minor. This plastic is spread in the country side and is not from a local dump site like the other plastic. With the offshore wind turbines the amount of micro plastics will be even worse because of the salt and stronger wind. Over the years the amount of micro plastics in fish will increase and be spread up in the food chain.
@@runedahl1477 As I said the amount is lower, as there is barely any plastic in the outher layer. Wear of tyres and roads is estimated to produce 8000 tons of microplastics a year alone in Sweden.
@@old-pete Yes there are things that produce more micro plastics than wind turbines but still they are among the worst polluters. The numbers can be disputed and there has not a lot of research done. A couple of weeks ago I attended a meeting regarding a new high voltage power line that will go across the island I live on. I don’t have any thing against this project because it seems like they are take care of environmental issues. The mast will mostly be made of fiberglass but they didn’t have any data regarding how much micro plastics that will give away. Apparently the producer had no data available. This will be important in the future but is not considered an issue yet. Apart from the plastic pollution there are so many negative sides to wind turbines so I think the whole project should be abandoned. To write them all down in this comment.
@@runedahl1477 If you consider the numbers, then no, windturbines are not among them. The negative sides to windpower are faily limited, if one considers the alternatives.
while i like the idea of finding a use after the life cycle. if a blade can be put in landfill you can cover it with soil and use the land for farming because there is no toxic waste, that doesent sound that bad. if the other solution is to disolve them with acids, that will have to stored somewhere as toxic chemical waste, then the landfill solution sounds a lot better to me. if u can use them in concrete or new blades without chemical waste that would be first choice though. unless we can use them to maby stabilize the ground under roads that are being built or something.
Sold off to smaller data centres who don't need the most modern equipment then sometimes sold off to individuals or recycled for the valuable metals such as gold the plastics and glass fibres from the circuit boards will be burned or landfill
The average modern wind turbine's blades weigh about 12 tons each. So that's 36 tons per turbine. Blades last 25 years, so every 25 years a turbine creates 36 tons of waste, let's say 40 tons, because sometimes a blade needs to be replaced. But an average coal fired power plant in the US will create 6,000,000 tons of waste in the same 25 years. The same as 150,000 wind turbines, more than double the number of turbines installed in the US since 1980. That's a single coal plant remember and that doesn't even account for the 95,000,000 tons of CO2 that same single plant will release in the same time period. Also remember that blades are basically inert fiberglass/resine like the millions and millions of recreational watercraft out in the world. (That nobody is concerned about scrapping.) However the waste from coal plants is well documented as highly toxic and we all know the effects of CO2 on the climate. Now in the US wind accounts for half as much electricity production as coal. But if everything remains equal for the next 25 years. The coal power industry will generate 1 billion tons of toxic waste, where as the wind industry will create 43 million tons of inert waste. Just 4% of the waste of a coal plant. And again there would be 16 trillion tons of CO2 released. The waste issue simply doesn't compute when compared to coal.
If the damage to the blade is not extensive, something similar is done. Well maintained windturbine blades are checked regularly and damaged areas are repaired. This can only repair superficial damage. Damage to the inner structure may make the retirement of the blades after 20 to 30 years necessary.
I see other problem, why only 20 years? Make them durable and actually reuse them in new turbines. They are strong enough not to decompose, but not strong enough to be reused?
They can run longer, when well maintened. There are two problems. 1. The material gets extremly stressed and experiences around 1 billion load changes in 20 years. That is not good for durability. 2. In the last 20 years the average windturbine power increased by 200%. New windturbines are much more powerful and more economic than their 20 year old predecessor. Companies want the new model.
The problem is not that vindturbin blades are non recyclable. The problem is that we have this crazy economy where huge nonrecyclable objects are "cheap". Why on earth is it cost efficient to build something, use it for a short while and just leave it on a landfill for eternity?
With earthquakes a common occurrence in countries with primitive dwelling construction materials. I'm wondering if scrap turbine blades could be used for a major upgrade in smaller building durability.... I understand getting them to point of use would certainly be an issue....
On my view on Wind Turbine recycling it can be combining our ideas create build a big grinding machine it can cut through pieces etc if you ever work Plastic and Rubber industry .
How does the recycling of renewables compare to the recycling of fossil fuel generation at the end of it's lifespan? How much of a nuclear reactor, a coal or gas fired power station is recyclable at the end of it's life? What's the cost to taxpayers to clean up disused power stations of old technologies compared to dismantling a wind turbine or replacing a solar panels with the next generation as they come along.
Considering the waste of the fuel, it is easier to recycle windturbines. The dismantling is paid by the owner and most nations demand securities that cover the dismantling costs. In case of nuclear power plants, these securities are often too low.
There was a video where they were being repurposed horizontal as a base for solar cells. Ugly but it did work. Might work in very isolated areas where people won't care about the looks.
So long as the fossil resins used in the blades are kept out of the atmosphere, they sequester fossil carbon. Until turbine blades are made from biomass instead, far better to grind them up for aggregate in concrete -- much stronger, lighter concrete more resistant to erosion due to the fiberglass stapling of this material -- than to burn for energy.
For the new wind turbine blades with the dissolvable epoxy, I would be worried that the natural acidity in rainwater could compromise the structurap integrity of the turbine blades. When rainwater forms, it naturally reacts with the CO2 in the air to form carbonic acid. If the blades only need mild acid to dissolve the epoxy, then I'd be worried that the carbonic acid in rainwater would be enough to destroy the blades over time.
I would not worry about that. Rain is not exactly a new phenomenon. The recycling process also needs a temperature, which is sigificantly higher than natural temperatures and the solutions are "a bit" stronger.
they are not bad ,just to old and gob and insurance do not allow them to be use, solution is to convert them as a air compressor ad a few together in a simple air motor ,the half tip can be used as rigid sails on ships
Thanks for great video again, but i have a thing. TLDR: Whats wrong with old turbines? Every time when i watch something about wind turbines, and it says "end of a life" or "end of a cycle" of turbine, what this ever mean? If generators parts are wearing they can be repaired or replaced. Leg part (tower, i dont know what is it name) usialy from steel and if it checked and repainted friquently can stand for hundreds of years. And wings are actualy undestructible for weather, if their finishing layers is faded or damaged it can be refinished too i guess (like compisit body of boats).
Hey there! Although that is the typical lifespan, regular maintenance and monitoring can help extend their operational life a lot. However, at some point, they will be strongly marked by wind and weather.
Blades will only stand so much use. They flex a LOT. They're made lightweight considering their size. So yes over time the blades wear out. The motors will also wear out. There are parts that can be replaced but over time they are better off replaced. But most of this gets recycled so not a big deal. I think even the metal stands wear out. They're supporting something where the goal is to have wind create movement in an electric motor which requires forces of wind to create centrifugal force. That creates strain on these stands. But once again, this is metal and can be recycled.
Hey! Mechanical engineer here, the main reason for maximum lifetime is that overtime reapeted yielding (flexing) will create small little cracks that over time can lead to failure. This phenomenon is called fatigue failure and is heavily studied. This is what drives the maximum lifetime which can be increased a bit but at a great cost in total weight, creating other issues elsewhere
Use basalt and epoxy, then it can be ground up and will combine as a filler material with other molded parts (so I’m told) such as molded auto and big truck bodies. Thus, all blade mass being 100% reused there need be no recycling problem for turbine blades, right?
Ground up and burned to make cement. Used to slow water run off and rebuild water tables. Erosion control in stream and shorelines Artificial reefs. Grounded up a reused to form new turbines.
Do you have any ideas what other things we could build with old wind turbine blades?💡
P.S. We would love to hear your thoughts about Planet A: what do you like and what don't you like? Let us know in this survey 👉surveys.dw.com/c/dwplaneta
Please see my comment re:Carbon Rivers. Only investment is needed to bring already existing solutions to market.
Please make a similar video about solar panels!
Turbine blades can be recycled for glass fiber (glass-to-glass). They're also a viable feedstock for renewable diesel. The same goes for fiberglass boat hulls.
@@ARepublicIfYouCanKeepIt Well, environmentalists look like they are never satisfied.
And thus playing the game of the Corporations in getting The People used to live under-graded lives with very little improvement in comfort due to so-called shortages.
🤔
Said shortages mainly due to poor management, lack of investment, funding and maintenance.
Etc.
I don't understand why this is a problem at all!?! We need to build "energy islands" in the North Sea. So drop one zillion blades in a big pile, add a little sand and concrete, presto!
That should use up the next 20 years of EOL blades. Then, we need to build up the mountains (well, hills) in Scotland and other places to construct pumped-hydro storage. That will dispose of maybe 50 years of blades. And if that's not enough, there is always an ongoing req for big sturdy bulky strips of non-polluting solid to make structures with.
I've worked for the one of the largest wind turbine developers and operations companies, for years, and we recycle 100% of our blades to concrete companies who grind them down and use the glass fiber to reinforce concrete, which makes concrete MUCH stronger. It's a perfect match as we'll continue making wind turbines for may decades, and will continue making concrete. I have recycled wind turbine blade glass fiber mix in the concrete of my own residential wind turbine foundation, in my own backyard. Full cycle life!
do you know, what happens to the fibers, when the concrete is being reused/ground to pieces... i'm just curious...
is using these fibers not the same as the "coral"reef solution that had in the 70s in the USA?
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_Reef
there they had the solution to recycle car tires in a eco friendly way, it was the future...
which turned out to be a complete disaster.
the concrete with the fibres in it, is to me, dangerous waste.
when the concrete is shredded at the end of lifetime of a structure the fibers will come free. maybe the fibers will come free after some years being exposed to the elements and people can breathe in the fibers.
@@saschathinius7082I'm thinking the same, it sounds to the next asbestos scandal to me
Concrete comes in many forms with many additives for even more purposes. If a recycled turbine blade can be used instead of new glass fibers for reinforcement, i don’t see why that should be not prefered.
@@saschathinius7082 One can use the fibers for cement production. They become the cement in a chemical reaction. The fibers do not exist anymore after that.
I've never seen a coal-fired power station talk about recycling their structures!
Glad you pointed this out. how many plastic car bodies are being recycled? What a bunch of BS!
True - coal powered generators are not claiming to be environmentally friendly so they don't need to worry about end of life recycling and the impact on their image. However it seems that the critics of renewable energy don't seem to mind if coal, oil, and gas energy facilities are environmentally friendly, it seems like this is only a concern with regard to renewable energy sources.
Coal fired power stations have at least double the life of wind turbines and can be refitted, they are far more efficient so far fewer are needed. Even with all these turbines we will always need fossil fuel power, wind energy is intermittent and unstable so the traditional power stations are still always running to even it out on the grid and to come into play when there is no wind or it is too windy so the turbines are shut down, the wind companies get paid a subsidy for turbines not turning, one of the reasons the price of electricity will never come down.
@judithmackay7158 I am not sure where you are from. Where I am from, Australia, I think the last coal-fired power station was completed in 2005. They just aren't economically viable anymore, despite having a lot of political support. To my knowledge, new large solar and wind are not receiving any government subsidies. So unless coal gets cheaper, which seems unlikely given it is a mature technology, it will slowly decline. Large scale batteries are currently mushrooming here.
@@judithmackay7158 You didn't address the dirty side of coal burning which is typical of being selectively environmentally concerned about renewables. Turbines get turned off mainly because the grid has too much power at that point in time, something you can't really do with coal i.e. you can't turn it off and on at will. UK electricity price is governed by the price of gas, not renewables.
Insane to think that most people can’t even put their trash in the right bin at home but are then bothered by this. Definitely about the trash and not just about finding anything that can be criticized about renewable wind energy
I would have agreed with your statement... IF putting trash into the right bin actually worked~
Because majority of those separate bins got collected into the same container and go to the same old landfill (or shipped to Asia to be party separated & reused). Recycling en masse is a scam. Recycling plastic is NOT financially valuable for companies & cannot be truly done (you get more inferior product); thin plastics is NOT recyclable at all (i.e. bags) because machines cannot process it (it got stuck in them).
I would have agreed with your statement... IF putting trash into the right bin actually worked~
Because majority of those separate bins got collected into the same container and go to the same old landfill (or shipped to Asia to be party separated & reused). Recycling en masse is a scam. Recycling plastic is NOT financially valuable for companies & cannot be truly done (you get more inferior product); thin plastics is NOT recyclable at all (i.e. bags) because machines cannot process it (it got stuck in them).
Perhaps you could look up the facts and truth about recycling?
The average US household generates 20lbs of trash per day. So in less than 5 years each house is landfilling the equivalent of 3 modern wind turbine blades. But these whining haters are concerned about wind turbine blades?!?
You know why? It’s because most garbage isn’t recyclable and it all ends up at the same landfill. At least a landfill produces methane to be used as a fuel. Fiberglass doesn’t break down.
If only there were equally directed campaigns for the recyclability of other industries. For instance, why aren't there as frequent news 'articles' concerned with recycling of heavy industry machinery, cars, airplanes and ships.
A cynic might be left wondering if someone is paying for these concerns to focus only on green industries and look past all the industries fuelled by oil and gas...
Exactly - there’s never an argument to ask how one goes about recycling a coal or gas power plant - even a nuclear plant uses tonnes of concrete and fossil fuels to be built and operate and even to decommission, yet anything renewable has to be greener than green as if the lifetime benefits aren’t somehow enough (that’s not to say that turbines shouldn’t be fully recycled- it’s just another plus point)
"green" whataboutism much?
@@kakikakakukaku Not necessarily. A lot of green opponents use arguments that ignore relativity. They point out any environmental impact at all for renewables while ignoring how they compare to existing systems.
Essentially, making perfect the enemy of good.
Example, one common point is that wind turbines kill thousands of birds. But that ignores the millions already killed by cats and windows. Death by wind turbines are a drop in the ocean compared to existing causes of bird mortality.
Another example, is pointing out that turbines and solar panels use fossil fuels to make and transport. While true, ignores how that compares to existing coal and gas.
According to studies by NREL, renewables despite manufacturing and disposal, are still magnitudes cleaner than coal and gas.
Source: NREL, Lifecycle Harmonisation
Correct, if only coal and fossile gas power plants were dealing with their waste (CO2, ashes and other micro particules), we wouldn’t be in such mess. Instead, they just dump it into the atmosphere.
At least wind, solar and nuclear energy do try to manage their wastes
Germany is heavily invested in Oil and Gas...and the lobby money comes from Oil and Gas...so that is your answer
Still better then using the air as a dumping ground.
I wonder if anybody could figure out how many kilowatt hours are produced by a typical generator blade over its lifetime and how that amount of waste would compared to waste from other generating systems per kilowatt-hour.
4500 MW a year over a course of 25 to 30 years before being dismantled due to safety.
For the 2MW turbine next door...
@@gePanzerTe W is the unit for power - don't miss your h at the end when you mean it produces 4.5 GWh.
Coal power plants generate at least tentimes much as waste for each produced kwh than windturbines, just by creating ash.
Doesn’t mention anything about recycling the massive concrete foundations.
@@johnsteading8610 id expect them to last a lot more than 20 25 years and could probably handle another wind turbine being installed on them, no? Don't see buildings with concrete foundations having them replaced every thirty years
Sky News Australia is an absolute disgrace. Thank you, DW, for excellent reporting on this and other issues.
Wow, I went to look at the videos they have on their channel. At least their agenda is clear.
What's wrong with sky au news?
@@roberthiggins6401 Cluelessness, a lot of it and a pro fossil fuel agenda.
Some countries export terrorism - Australia exports Rupert Murdoch’s brand of “News” - we know which is more detrimental to humanity.
@@roberthiggins6401 if you go look at the titles of their videos about wind power, they're all negative. Now, I don't know if they have any positive news at all, but that doesn't seem balanced.
Edit: of course they have positive news about coal and oil as well, except when the news are about opposition to those.
Wind turbines have always been products with a high recycling rate - around 80-95 percent of a wind turbine is completely recyclable. The only challenging part are the blades, which use fiberglass as their material, and have therefore been more difficult to recycle. In Finland, a solution to this challenge has been sought in the KiMuRa project, where a collection and processing network for plastic composite waste was created in which it's recycled 100% in the manufacture of cement, partly as energy and partly as raw material. The first wind turbine platforms went into circulation through the new system during the past summer in 2021.
only one place on the planet looking at recycling blades is in the USA. They are shredded to then be added to a concrete mix not a green answer at all
@@simonbowman6206 Check your facts, is all I can say. There's also a Swedish company Stena Recycling, that operates in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Poland, Italy, and the US.
@@simonbowman6206 That is wrong. The cement recycling is done in Europe for years.
@@simonbowman6206how is it not a green solution? Using shredded turbine blades means less cement that damages the environment and less ressources needed. Using those blades after 25 to 30 years of producing electricity is exactly the green solution we need
@@simonbowman6206 Loits of places are doing it, and the US wasn't the first either. As for not green, it reduces the CO2 output when making cement by about 40%.
This really highlights the difference between these windmill companies and oil companies. An oil company would try to hide this kind of thing and play off how impactulfull it really is. Wind is saying "yeah, we have a problem here so lets solve it for a better tomorrow".
There actually isn't a problem. The composite blades get recycled as building material or steel blades just go into the steel scrap process.
I really like the concrete idea, other people are freaking out about "omg we are out of sand!!!" when we have so many things we can dump in concrete.
It's not just any sand, it has to be a specific kind of sand for it to have good material properties. It's unlikely that the blades are replacing this specific ingredient, seems that it substitutes for lime and/or gravel.
@@vidyagaems4063 it's neither, It's used as an additive.
The concrete is exactly the same with sand, lime and gravel and if needed rebar too
it doesn't increase its strength by anything significant, either
however, by adding glass or carbon fibre to it, it prevents the small cracks forming thus preventing water ingress to the rebar that causes it to rust thus increasing the lifespan of the concrete it also looks nicer.
practical engineering has an excellent TH-cam video on exactly this.
@@randomcow505 @vidyagaems4063 you guys are both sorta correct but i've never understood the clasification of addative vs main ingredient in concrete, it's all gotta work together. As for the type of sand, that is mainly about the gemetry. Rounder grains make it easier for cracks to bypass that grain, so filiments are not very round, they can be round in one part but very pointy in general on the ends, is like little bits of rebar.
@@vidyagaems4063 btw it's also about energy, you can take the wrong sand and make it into the right sand, or take some waste mat like this and turn it into something physically identical to or better than the target sand, all the atoms are still here and in theory with enough energy and ingenuity humans can arrange all the atoms on earth how ever we see fit... just not by burning oil.
Wind power is undeniably vital for a cleaner future, but we can't ignore the elephant in the room - recycling those massive turbine blades. It's inspiring to see efforts and innovation in action, from burning off plastics to turning them into cement.Kudos to Siemens Gamesa and Vestas for working on recyclable blades! Let's keep pushing for a greener future
It is better than burning oil, coal or natural gas to make cement.
But 80-90% of wind turbines are easily cyclable.
Evsn though blades look massive they really light and empty inside. If you look by mass it's not massive
So to speak taking care of recycling of blades is a positive feedback loop! Nice ending!!! Let’s go!
it is funny how in the car and yatch industry, not being able to recycle composites was never a problem... but for wind turbines!
ok, i watched till the end and saw that it is a self-made objective! thats awesome
I love when people complain about putting blades in landfills. I haul dumpster for a living and each day the transfer station alone does 600 tons of trash. That not including the other 9-12 places that are taking in just as much and more. West michigan i would say is around 8000 tons a day in the 5 landfills i can think of.. that just trash construction waste etc... so how bad is blades really compared to just 1 day of trash... the future $$$$ will be in cleaning up landfills. I bet they get big government grants(aka our tax dollars) along with all the other materials they recycle and make billions on top of getting paid now...
One day the landfills have to be cleaned, no doubt, but lets see how soon or late this will be.
I'm sure all the world's wind turbines blades would fit in the abandonned open-pit mines. Fill them up, put a layer of soil and plant trees. Voilà! Two problems solved.
This is a good overview of the problem with some interesting techniques coming up.
But one thing about scale...
At 2:40, 43 million tons of used wind turbine blades by 2050 is nothing compared the current worldwide _annual_ emissions of 37 *billion* metric tons of hazardous fossil fuel carbon dioxide right now!
And carbon dioxide is a highly diffuse high entropy gas that cannot be collected. OTOH, the epoxy and fiber material of a blade is much more inert and is solid so can be stored for later use when recycling techniques have advanced.
Since wind turbines were built to last forever, why not use them as part of seawalls or for sewers? Concrete will only last for around one lifetime before losing all of its strength due to oxidation and salts.
Obviously! And many other applications of big sturdy solid slabs.
Wind turbines currently are built to last a lifecycle of up to 25 years. 🌬 In about 3:50 minutes to the video we discuss the possibilities of old blades in cement production.
Seawalls ? Not the best idea, normaly you just use big stones, because the waves not just crush against the stones, the waves lose their strength in all this space between these stones. If there would be big waves and you walking there and the waves would hit against solid walls you would be wet.
Fiberglass would be rapidly eroded by sand abrasion (infact errosion is the main life time limiter on blades), so a marine reuse senario is not viable. Sewer piping needs to sealed and blades while hollow inside are not pipes and most certainly not the right size, so they would need to be broken down and reformed, but fiberglass loses tensile strength when you break the fibers (for that matter everything made of fiber, be it carbon, glass or cotton will lose tensile strength if the fiber is shreded, it's the nature of fiber after all).
@@kennethferland5579 No, on the contrary the sand abrasion etc. is exactly what you need, so marine reuse scenario is an excellent use case. You need a big pile of sand. End of.
The first turbine recycling plant will be open next year in Denmark, with another four to follow in different EU countries. I read the process for doing this was masterminded at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow.
The problem with this concept is how expensive and energy intensive it is to transport turbine blades. The idea of loading up thousands of blades and literally transporting them 100's to potentially 10,000's of kilometers to the nearest recycling facility is insane. Maybe feasible in DK where it's a small country. But somewhere like the US or China, good luck making that business case make sense. My money is on mobile equipment that can travel to a site and grind up the blades into an aggregate for concrete and asphalt. The very best case used as aggregate in the foundations of a wind facility repowering project. Or worse case they get landfilled, but take up little space. In the case of landfill, grinding is probably unnecessary. Because blades are hollow and can be cut into smaller pieces and stacked. Requiring less energy than grinding but still easier to transport to the nearest landfill.
The reason I don't care about recycling these things is this...
Let's break things down. Let's compare wind energy to say coal. Let's use a 200MW coal power plants production and compare that that a 450MW wind power plant because of lower capacity factors of wind turbines. Let's say the turbines are 4MW each, which is pretty average onshore these days. That's a wind farm of 112 wind turbines that have a design life of 25 years. After 25 years there will be 3000 tons of blade and fiberglass waste needing disposal. That's a big number.
Now where does coal stack up?
To produce the exact same amount of energy as the wind power plant. The coal power plant will need to burn 44,000,000 tons (yes millions). Producing 4,000,000 tons of highly toxic and even radioactive fly ash. Furthermore the plant will also release 48,000,000 tons of CO2 into the atmosphere.
52,000,000 tons of pollution wreaking havoc on our environment. Compared to 3000 tons of relatively benign fiberglass waste which can safely be landfilled at worst. That's 0.0056% the amount of waste.
Just some food for thought before worrying about the wind industry for the waste it creates.
Such an interesting and important topic! I absolutely love the idea of repurposing discarded wind turbine blades. One innovative way I can think of is to use these blades to create eco-friendly boats, perhaps similar to Pacific proas. Imagine sailing the seas in vessels that not only harness the power of the wind but also promote sustainability and reuse. It's a fantastic way to contribute to a greener future while fostering creativity in design.
@@H4N5O1O my idea is to reuse the material from blades to build sailboats for people who go fishing and do it with the power of sails no fancy yachts. So it's yes not perfect but not in one hand putting blades to ground or grind them to pulp. If you can go fishing without engine it mean that you don't need to fish so much. You don't need to fish for fuel or parts for engine. It's like taking a perfect tree and grind it to make MDF sheet from it. It's stupid.
Fiberglass in concrete makes the concrete much more flexible and less prone to cracking, far less to no steel reinforcing is needed if fiberglass is added to the concrete. Burning the waste makes perfect sense to me, it is the same as all the other waste in the world. I do love those bridges and play structures though, reusing and repurposing ought to come before recycling and incineration
if i am not wrong,it may increase tensile strength of the concrete block created
how to deal with this: Giving the nutjobs that claim wind energy is not renewable no air time, put the blades in a landfill or repurpose them and focus research on other things that are more critical
What about building houses or roofs for shadingcar parks/fields.
It has been happening for years.. this story is highly misleading
That's a very good idea. Thanks 👍
@@charlesbrummett4025Could you give some news articles or studies for that? I'd love to read up on it more!
Gamesa has been recycling wtb for years into medical teaching devices exp skeleton... lower and upper g.i. tract.. exploted skull with and with out brain.. some of the fiberglass has been used in concrete for a lighter and stronger base mix.
Before any wtg is erected there must be a contingency plan in place for the disposal and or recycling of the wtg after it's useful Life of about 20 years this contingency plan is back up by a surety bond for this reason. Unless you have spent 20 plus years dealing with renewables from the base to the light switch and from actual working from erection to corporate office you will never receive the complete or correct truth. If it does go to the landfill the cost are astronomical due to weight.. composition of the material which is some metal.. basa wood and fiberglass All of which is considered industrial waste.
D.O.E speaks of a company that is grinding the wtg blades and selling them to concrete companies
It’s great to see progress in this area. Hopefully that’ll become the new standard. Thank you DW. Dumping things that have a long life cycle in landfills is never a sustainable solution. Especially when you’re talking about “green energy” products.
What is wrong with leaving them in a landfill? Over time it will become more and more profitable for a company to learn how to recycle them as new technologies get invented. Companies aren't going to disappear when there is no more plastic or oil left, they will find a way to make money recycling trash.
The recycling can only improve by recycling. Solving technical issues on the drawing board, one is not even aware of, does not work.
Yep, my first thought is vindicated: nothing but an image problem. The cement thing seems nice though
@4:30 So, what are those gasses that blade recycle factory is producing? And where do they draw their energy from?
I liked the bridge and play ground idea. Sounds fun!
After videos like this I have the urge (sadly not the motivation) to start learning waste management.
This problem is way above me.
So I only have some really naive thought like:
We love glass and metal, because you just reheat and reshape it. The reason archeologists barely find any glass relics, because it either brakes down to sand size or you just melt it and reblow it. Matals are the "same"
But I'm sure on molecular level experts will explain that this isn't that simple either.
So we have plastic, that made out of oil. Why is it so hard to liquify plastic and just remold it to a new form?
Years ago Ive watched videos about anaerob burning of plastic can brake the chains and brake it back to a petrol. Wonder what happened with that experiment?
Those ended up that its not viable as fuel, because the quality is worse and would ruin engines. But what about creating new plastic?
There are another experimental steps with plastic eating bacterias.
So again, feed the tubnines to bacterias, and use the "poop" :D to remold stuff.
My concern is to shred things to pieces and use it for construction (houses and roads) we just postpone the problem and just shrug it under the carpet as mcroplastic.
And we have the economical dilemma:
When they say, its doable, but expensive.
This is at least promising, because when it has a price label, the supply and demand will eventually shift.
a) Either with technological improvement:
same way solar panels became cheap, because engineers made it viable. In 10 years prices dropped by 90% because they found better materials, better way of mass producing, or simply make it viable for mass production.
b) supply and demand:
eventually raw materials will deplete. When the barrel of oil price will hit a certain point, suddenly every landfill site will turn into a "mine" and these "expensive solution" will become the extraction method.
Some new info for you,,, a wind farm in my area was sold to the landholder after it had been in operation for 23yrs. Now the landholder has since sold his farm because he found the costs to maintain the wind farm was larger than the returns it earned. SO THE INSTALLERS RECOVERED THE COSTS TO FIT THE SYSTEM AND A HANDSOME RETURN ON TOP & NO COSTS TO REMEDIATE THE AREA AND PROFIT FROM ITS SALE !! yes thats the game watch it roll out in your area
Glass fibers has been produces for over 50 years for pipes, pipelines, pools, boat hulls, car bodywork, house panelling, etc.
And hundreds of times more waste is generated there than from wind rotors.
In Europe, large glass fibre parts are burned as fuel in cement factories.
This is a good piece..
What happens to the waste chemicals once separation has occurred? Sounds like another problem...
What's the problem (if any) of refurbishing / repairing old blades to use in newer wind turbines?
The designs are changing all the time? You can't repair the structural integrity to close to what it was when it was operating well?
The blades get longer. 20 year old blades cannot be used for newer more powerful turbines. Sometimes old blades, in good condition, get used as replacement on windturbines of the same type.
As long as there is no structural damage, blades can be repaired and that is done regularly. Lifetimes of 30 years are possible, but that costs money. But after 20 years new turbines are threetimes as powerful. Currently it is more efficient to replace the whole turbine.
In the future, if the power increase slows down, it might be a good idea to keep them running for longer.
Composite structures degrade over time. Resins get brittle, fibers crack and delaminate.
Blade design is indeed constantly improving and blades get bigger because the turbines efficiency increases faster than the size does.
Also the technology becomes obsolete. Is a 25-30 year old car viable for sale today?
The companies that own these wind farms are looking to upgrade using more productive equipment.
A move away from fiberglass is certainly needed, an aluminum skinned blade analagous in construction to an airplane wing would be be both more durable, recyclable and modular allowing for easier transport and assembly. Fiberglass made sense when blades were tiny but it's long past the point when other materials should have been used, but the industry always found it easier to stick with what was known and push up the size of molds and blade transporters incrementally rather then switch to different materials.
There are no big aluminium blades strong enough.
@@H4N5O1O The problem is not the skin, but the structure of the blade.
1:55 dr claire barlow has such a beautiful accent - it's a pleasure to hear her speak.
What makes blades wear out?
they dont realy wear out i think
Both mechanical stresses and weather conditions; extreme temperatures, uv-radiation, rain etc. will eventually leave their mark on the blades as well. 🌬
It is mainly dust and water.
After years of exposure the protective layer can get damaged, which leads to further damage.
If the blade is well maintained, the damage can be spotted in time and be repaired. Old blades can even be aerodynamicly optimized in the process.
It might be a silly question, is it possible to use aerospace grade Aluminium for the wind turbine blades or an mixed alloy of some sort? Also we can use off-shore sea based wind turbines close to the shore, so it does not make the green land space look ugly!
Not at all! Aerospace-grade aluminum could be theoretically possible, the combination of cost, fatigue resistance, and manufacturability makes composite materials more ideal. What is being investigated at the moment are different wood compounds such as wood-epoxy or wood-fibre-epoxy. Off-shore wind is a great topic we have videos on! 🌬️
"Is offshore wind the energy of the future?"
th-cam.com/video/IsUBq3BM8rU/w-d-xo.html
"Floating wind turbines: Offshore energy's secret weapon"
th-cam.com/video/El4kHkJ7ITs/w-d-xo.html
@@DWPlanetA Thank you for the links DW, very informative and prompt response 🙂
Talk about the petrochemicals in the motor chamber, the resin, the production, and the recycling. And the dead birds.
... and you are deflecting from the much bigger enviromental impacts of fossil fuels.
Great video, thanks DW.
It will be very useful to cut Wind turbine blades into House and home paneling and insulation materials since they are mostly in shape to be directly used in their construction like they are currently used for bridges, walkways/overhead walkways, and parks.
The material and processing costs of the blades will be quite lower in the construction industry in comparison to going full blade recycling to its base materials and compounds overall.
How are we going with plastic and car tires?
I don’t understand how Ørsted says they’re 98% recyclable yet we have this happening.
I think that there is a fallacy that says something like "If you can't conceive of something it doesn't mean others can't".
yes, for a lot of people its the classic "they don't know enough to know they don't know enough"
Adaptive reuse! Why not as tidal energy guides?
Silly straw man argument. Yes, everything in life in an ideal world could/should be 100% sustainable. The real arguement is comparing total damage made by existing systems of power generation. In other words, what is NOT recyclable/sustainable when comparing existing fossil fuel systems vs current wind turbine systems. The system should be viewed by ALL products required to extract, produce, transport the energy source from its extraction/generation site to its distribution site. How many parts of an oil transportation ship will never be recycled? How much energy is used to create fossil fuel transportation? Landfill is an interesting problem all on its own, much of which has almost no statistically relevant correlation to the disposal of turbine blades.
It does rather remind me of the outraged people saying that wind turbines kill birds. Technically true, yes... but domestic cats kill more. By a few orders of magnitude. It's just an excuse from people who have gotten over-invested in the 'culture war' and think they found an argument to own the libs.
In other words, perfect is the enemy of good. And a lot of renewable opponents make the fallacy of pointing any environmental impact at all while ignoring the relative impact compared to our existing coal and gas plants.
On that note, please check out our video:
"Exposed: The smear tactics against wind and solar" here 👉 th-cam.com/video/k_Wa7v76k-U/w-d-xo.html.
Wind power is neither clean, nor cheap. It requires equal capacity of balancing power with heavy turbines (eg. coal, gas, oil, hydro or nuclear). The cost per KWh is about 5 times higher than for nuclear. CO2 per produced KWh is 5-15 times that of nuclear, depending if you include emissions from balancing power or not. Plus the microplastics; about 62 kg. per turbine/year! Plus the noise and shadow reflexes that pester life quality and property values for humans. And so on. It's a trendy gimmick. Build nuclear breeding plants instead.
But what about the initial construction costs? And decommissioning old plants, that also adds to the total expense? Check out our channel for multiple videos on nuclear. ☢️ Here's one to start with 👉 th-cam.com/video/9X00al1FsjM/w-d-xo.html
@@DWPlanetA A nuclear plant is far more expensive to build than a wind turbine of any size. But since nuclear plants today have a life span of about 80 years, the cost per produced KWh is much smaller than that for wind (+gas etc. back up power/regulation power). Even a life span of 40 years (older plants), plus huge waste storage taxes, like here in Sweden, gives cheaper electricity than wind. Wind power, combined with closing several nuclear plants, has derailed the Swedish electricity grid. Once probably the cleanest, cheapest and most stable in the world. 50% nuclear, 50% hydro. Now total volatility. From minusprices to high prices, 10 times that of before. No industry can work under such conditions = deindustralization. In Germany even worse due to even more wind and less nuclear. They have reopened their old coal plants(!!) due to this. So the "climate friendly" wind politics --> much more coal/CO2 emissions.
France has about 60 reactors. Their prices are many times lower than those in Germany.
Nuclear is the most effective, climate friendly, safe, and cheap form of energy production, except hydro power. One can like or dislike, but that is a fact. And breeding technology will enhance that even more.
@@DWPlanetA I watched your video. Recognize much, and question some. Germany have had to reopen several coal power plants due to shutting down their very safe nuclear plants. Sky rocketing energy prices, which affect all neighbouring countries in the EU.I read the other day that Germany now have some 150-ish coal power plants running. In the name of "climate"... Now they are going to tear down a village from the 12-hundreds - to expand the coal mining.
I want to give you this video, by a serious and well read people emulator and entrepreneur (one can choose english texting):
th-cam.com/video/w-g5kZ6KLbo/w-d-xo.htmlsi=MPZBHQ6QjBZQi8CH
Good job Malte!
Very interesting video! Please do the same with solar panels!
We've done multiple longer videos on solar. Please check out our channel and subscribe for new videos every Friday! Here is one of them: 🌞
"How green is solar energy really?" 👇
th-cam.com/video/EWV4e453y8Y/w-d-xo.html
Use the blades as arms for wave energy generation. Or as beach piers to stop sand erosion.
As said by another user on the another video about the same topic, "My first thought when they say "used to make concrete" was as an aggregate alternative or filler, like how fiberglass is added to some mixes.
Nope. Burning." lol
Nope. It becomes cement.
Well, you missed out on Vattenfalls latest trials of wooden windmills. Made of wood the way you'd build yachts with. Much more resilient to strong wind and vibrations too, due to natural elasticity avoiding breakeages. And of course fully recycleable. Promising.
How small are they?
Very tall. Check it out online. Anyway, here in northern Friesland some parts of those old windmills are being used as small huts and windshields for our sheeps ;-)))
@@susannepeters5886 A: They are building only the tower from wood
B: the wood is laminated
C: while using wood saves CO2, it is not better at recycling, as the towers are usually made from steel anyway and the question is how long that woodden tower will last
D: the first turbine built is just a 30m tower with a 500 kW turbine...
E: admittedly they are currentl building a 2 MW, which is serious business, but we will see how long it will last
Sure... nothing proven yet. Anyway, I do welcome any innovation and will not condemn or despise new ways until proven wrong. Constructive critisism fine. Love open minds. Only way forward. We're the country of poets, thinkers and engineers :-) are we not? Dream, think and realize.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a big enthusiast of recycling, but what worries me about using "off the shelf" chemicals is that most of the dissolving chemicals we have readily available today are really harmful to human health and the environment, so some investment we'll need to go into preventing leaks and whatsoever.
Let's see, I just hope we don't repeat the same mistakes over and over again, like "oh, that's too costly" or "it's more economically feasible to just build a new one from scratch than closing the production cycle".
Those are the very kind of arguments we have been listening to for decades in the nuclear industry that have twarthed attempts to fully recycle the spent fuel instead of just having them lying down in deep repositories.
For a real and fast climate transition, I do believe the capitalist mindset has to change, and costs should reflect the abiotic depletion (ADP) consequences of choosing not to recycle.
Can glass be recycled into its constituent ingredients? Grinding down wind turbine blades I would consider acceptable so long as the energy for it is from renewable sources. We could also try to improve the efficiency of this. We can also try too make use of more manual labour.
Our wind turbines are 100% recyclable,
GreeNX
Could we use them to build some form of breakwater in coastal areas?
Kills too many birds and fish. Wears out probably in just 10 years, not 25 years. Blades recycled are more expensive than non-recycled. Takes up farm land. We need all the farmland we can get. Solar panels are better, because they cool the waters which produces more fish. And solar panels that are not over lakes and oceans are distributed over land that can't be farmed.
Kills less birds and fish than fossil fuels.
Windturbines can run fine for 20 years, some even for 25 and 30 years. The oldest runs for over 40 years.
Farmland is rarely used and the pillar itself does not need much space.
And solar panels can be found on roofs and unused land. One does not need farms. But some farming works well together with solar energy.
@@old-pete Solar roofs are the most inefficient method of energy. Turbines do break down in just 10 years. You do need more farming. There are 8 billion people on the planet soon to be 9 billion. I pretty much disagree with everything you said. What does work are these new kind of turbines that circle around about a 1/4 of a mile. New technology. It's about 30% cheaper and more efficient. Solar panels break down very quickly, e.g. hail, rocks, animals. The only solution is new types of wind farms that nobody knows about.
@@Parture Solar roofs work quite well, as one can save grid costs.
Your information about windturbines seems to be outdated by at least 40 years.
The population increase should be reason enough that one cannot supply fossil based power to all of them.
Solar panels last easily for 30 years, some even 40 years, as they have no moving parts. Solar panels usually come with hail protection.
@@old-pete Solar roofs are incredibly inefficient. They need to be major solar farms to maximize efficiency. The new type of wind farm is new technology; it's quite amazing. We can't jump to fossil fuels all at once. It will take decades so solar and wind are supplemental for now. Patience. Solar panels break down quite fast; you can observe this in lots of youtube videos. Solar gets hit by all types of objects so it has a surprisingly short life, not to mention they are rendered useless covered by dirt losing its impact. You don't seem to understand what's going on.
@@Parture They are not inefficient for the owners of these roofs.
Nobody plans to leave fossil fuels all at once. That is why some countries started 50 years ago.
And I have never seen solar panels breaking quickly. I know people who have them on their roof for over 20 years and all reports agree on that.
could we use to create coral reefs?
Great video! What about re-using blade materials in disposable technology currently using plastics? In-ear headphone cases? Smartphones? Television housings?
Why can't we repair wind turbine blades?
They can be repaired to a certain extent.
Cement is a great idea. Making it easely reciclable is the G.O.A.T but, worst case scenario... just store it. Scale will make it more economically viable to find uses.
cement seems to be a good option.
Seems like the blades could be cut into structural beams for housing and other types of buildings. Yes, the blades are curved, but there are relatively long straight sections too. And I know that the blades have relatively thin stressed skin and aren’t solid.
Every technolgy has to deal with problems. We should keep moving towards renewable energy and end fosil fuels era.
All those degraded landscapes give me nightmares.
I dunno, I dont think its healthy to play to the concerns of corporations who are so willing to look past far more harmful industries. Sky News Australia seems like they just wanna grab at low hanging fruit. If we're already recycling 90%, thats a heck of a lot better than we can say about most things. Like you said, the share of turbine blades in trash by 2050 is so tiny. I would just put innovation towards reducing cost at that point.
if you can recycle the old blade it also means that the blade is worth more money, which is in a roundabout way making it a better investment so its "cheaper"
thats the main reason the companies do this, the customer will buy the blade that he can later recycle over a normal blade...
You can't recycle the 8 billion tons of coal that are burned ever year, either. Turbine blades, while definitely a blemish, are hardly a 'gotcha' for fossil fuels.
But, I'm glad to see progress being made, and that there's so much effort to remedy the blemish!
What should we do with turbine blades?
1) Never in a landfill
2) Until we have something better, burn it and use the energy.
2b) Carbon fibre should burn, glass fibre is basically rock and can be used in concrete.
3) If we can build new turbines/ cars / houses and so on, that is of course the best
Not a word is mention about micro plastics in this video. These blades while in use throws of a lot of micro plastics due to erosion. This goes directly into nature and is absorbed by everything that lives. Offshore turbines are even worse due to salt and stronger wind. In an estimate from Sweden they reckoned that their 4000 turbine or so have produced about 270 tons of micro plastic, only beaten by artificial grass on football fields.
The amount is much lower, since the outer layers are paint and negligible compared to the human use of plastics in all other areas.
@@old-pete The paint doesn’t stop the spread of micro plastics since gel coat have been used since the first fiberglass propellers . The estimated 270 tons from the land based turbines are not minor. This plastic is spread in the country side and is not from a local dump site like the other plastic. With the offshore wind turbines the amount of micro plastics will be even worse because of the salt and stronger wind.
Over the years the amount of micro plastics in fish will increase and be spread up in the food chain.
@@runedahl1477 As I said the amount is lower, as there is barely any plastic in the outher layer. Wear of tyres and roads is estimated to produce 8000 tons of microplastics a year alone in Sweden.
@@old-pete Yes there are things that produce more micro plastics than wind turbines but still they are among the worst polluters.
The numbers can be disputed and there has not a lot of research done. A couple of weeks ago I attended a meeting regarding a new high voltage power line that will go across the island I live on. I don’t have any thing against this project because it seems like they are take care of environmental issues. The mast will mostly be made of fiberglass but they didn’t have any data regarding how much micro plastics that will give away. Apparently the producer had no data available. This will be important in the future but is not considered an issue yet.
Apart from the plastic pollution there are so many negative sides to wind turbines so I think the whole project should be abandoned.
To write them all down in this comment.
@@runedahl1477 If you consider the numbers, then no, windturbines are not among them.
The negative sides to windpower are faily limited, if one considers the alternatives.
while i like the idea of finding a use after the life cycle. if a blade can be put in landfill you can cover it with soil and use the land for farming because there is no toxic waste, that doesent sound that bad. if the other solution is to disolve them with acids, that will have to stored somewhere as toxic chemical waste, then the landfill solution sounds a lot better to me. if u can use them in concrete or new blades without chemical waste that would be first choice though. unless we can use them to maby stabilize the ground under roads that are being built or something.
Dr. Barlow from Cambridge is the Mary Berry of recycling. 😍
Could you do a similar piece on what happens to all of the computers which power data centers when they are decommissioned?
Sold off to smaller data centres who don't need the most modern equipment
then sometimes sold off to individuals or recycled for the valuable metals such as gold
the plastics and glass fibres from the circuit boards will be burned or landfill
The average modern wind turbine's blades weigh about 12 tons each. So that's 36 tons per turbine. Blades last 25 years, so every 25 years a turbine creates 36 tons of waste, let's say 40 tons, because sometimes a blade needs to be replaced.
But an average coal fired power plant in the US will create 6,000,000 tons of waste in the same 25 years. The same as 150,000 wind turbines, more than double the number of turbines installed in the US since 1980. That's a single coal plant remember and that doesn't even account for the 95,000,000 tons of CO2 that same single plant will release in the same time period. Also remember that blades are basically inert fiberglass/resine like the millions and millions of recreational watercraft out in the world. (That nobody is concerned about scrapping.) However the waste from coal plants is well documented as highly toxic and we all know the effects of CO2 on the climate.
Now in the US wind accounts for half as much electricity production as coal. But if everything remains equal for the next 25 years. The coal power industry will generate 1 billion tons of toxic waste, where as the wind industry will create 43 million tons of inert waste. Just 4% of the waste of a coal plant. And again there would be 16 trillion tons of CO2 released.
The waste issue simply doesn't compute when compared to coal.
A gel coat can be added to fiber glass boats and the hull is as new. Why can't this be done with wind turbine blades?
If the damage to the blade is not extensive, something similar is done.
Well maintained windturbine blades are checked regularly and damaged areas are repaired.
This can only repair superficial damage. Damage to the inner structure may make the retirement of the blades after 20 to 30 years necessary.
I see other problem, why only 20 years? Make them durable and actually reuse them in new turbines. They are strong enough not to decompose, but not strong enough to be reused?
They can run longer, when well maintened.
There are two problems.
1. The material gets extremly stressed and experiences around 1 billion load changes in 20 years. That is not good for durability.
2. In the last 20 years the average windturbine power increased by 200%. New windturbines are much more powerful and more economic than their 20 year old predecessor. Companies want the new model.
Yep. Not harassing others that use fiberglass. Don't hear this about surfboards or car bodies
The problem is not that vindturbin blades are non recyclable. The problem is that we have this crazy economy where huge nonrecyclable objects are "cheap". Why on earth is it cost efficient to build something, use it for a short while and just leave it on a landfill for eternity?
Best thing to do is grind it to powder and use it for casting concrete, precast items or paver blocks
With earthquakes a common occurrence in countries with primitive dwelling construction materials. I'm wondering if scrap turbine blades could be used for a major upgrade in smaller building durability.... I understand getting them to point of use would certainly be an issue....
I want to have a cup of tea with Claire Barlow.
On my view on Wind Turbine recycling it can be combining our ideas create build a big grinding machine it can cut through pieces etc if you ever work Plastic and Rubber industry .
How does the recycling of renewables compare to the recycling of fossil fuel generation at the end of it's lifespan? How much of a nuclear reactor, a coal or gas fired power station is recyclable at the end of it's life? What's the cost to taxpayers to clean up disused power stations of old technologies compared to dismantling a wind turbine or replacing a solar panels with the next generation as they come along.
Considering the waste of the fuel, it is easier to recycle windturbines.
The dismantling is paid by the owner and most nations demand securities that cover the dismantling costs. In case of nuclear power plants, these securities are often too low.
Those blades would make great wall material
There was a video where they were being repurposed horizontal as a base for solar cells. Ugly but it did work. Might work in very isolated areas where people won't care about the looks.
So long as the fossil resins used in the blades are kept out of the atmosphere, they sequester fossil carbon. Until turbine blades are made from biomass instead, far better to grind them up for aggregate in concrete -- much stronger, lighter concrete more resistant to erosion due to the fiberglass stapling of this material -- than to burn for energy.
For the new wind turbine blades with the dissolvable epoxy, I would be worried that the natural acidity in rainwater could compromise the structurap integrity of the turbine blades. When rainwater forms, it naturally reacts with the CO2 in the air to form carbonic acid. If the blades only need mild acid to dissolve the epoxy, then I'd be worried that the carbonic acid in rainwater would be enough to destroy the blades over time.
I would not worry about that. Rain is not exactly a new phenomenon.
The recycling process also needs a temperature, which is sigificantly higher than natural temperatures and the solutions are "a bit" stronger.
Creating public shelters with them would be welcome.
If only big oil demanded same standards for it’s own business model. Hypocrits!
Yesterday's news. Vestas is rolling out a process to recycle epoxy based blades and Siemens Gamesa offers at least recyclable blades for new turbines.
Why do we care what Fox "news" says about renewable energy?
Because too many people watch that stuff. People that hinder and sabotage the solutions to the problems we have.
I hope those dissolvable blades aren't affected by acid rain.
they are not bad ,just to old and gob and insurance do not allow them to be use, solution is to convert them as a air compressor ad a few together in a simple air motor ,the half tip can be used as rigid sails on ships
Thanks for great video again, but i have a thing.
TLDR: Whats wrong with old turbines?
Every time when i watch something about wind turbines, and it says "end of a life" or "end of a cycle" of turbine, what this ever mean? If generators parts are wearing they can be repaired or replaced. Leg part (tower, i dont know what is it name) usialy from steel and if it checked and repainted friquently can stand for hundreds of years. And wings are actualy undestructible for weather, if their finishing layers is faded or damaged it can be refinished too i guess (like compisit body of boats).
Hey there! Although that is the typical lifespan, regular maintenance and monitoring can help extend their operational life a lot. However, at some point, they will be strongly marked by wind and weather.
Blades will only stand so much use. They flex a LOT. They're made lightweight considering their size. So yes over time the blades wear out.
The motors will also wear out. There are parts that can be replaced but over time they are better off replaced. But most of this gets recycled so not a big deal. I think even the metal stands wear out. They're supporting something where the goal is to have wind create movement in an electric motor which requires forces of wind to create centrifugal force. That creates strain on these stands. But once again, this is metal and can be recycled.
Hey! Mechanical engineer here, the main reason for maximum lifetime is that overtime reapeted yielding (flexing) will create small little cracks that over time can lead to failure. This phenomenon is called fatigue failure and is heavily studied. This is what drives the maximum lifetime which can be increased a bit but at a great cost in total weight, creating other issues elsewhere
@@jean-louistychon3340 thank you all for answer)
I had never heard the greenees about this...
And we have half the Northsee with this durty windmillstuf..To replace within 15 years...
The per capita there is more composite waste created by the MTB you ride through the forests than from wind turbine blades.
Use them as construction fill, in roads, or building sites.
No worries.
Use basalt and epoxy, then it can be ground up and will combine as a filler material with other molded parts (so I’m told) such as molded auto and big truck bodies. Thus, all blade mass being 100% reused there need be no recycling problem for turbine blades, right?
Ground up and burned to make cement.
Used to slow water run off and rebuild water tables.
Erosion control in stream and shorelines
Artificial reefs.
Grounded up a reused to form new turbines.
We could use them to fill the holes in the ground left by coal mining ;)
maybe use the entire windturbine system build some housing in countries that need housing, that would be pretty cool.