By Courtesy of Vestas
Danish wind turbine manufacturer Vestas has developed a solution to facilitate the complete recycling of its equipment, including parts containing epoxy resin -- previously thought to be impossible to break down into re-usable components.
Danish wind turbine manufacturer Vestas has developed a solution to facilitate the complete recycling of its equipment, including parts containing epoxy resin -- previously thought to be impossible to break down into re-usable components.
Some parts of a wind turbine have been particularly difficult to recycle due to the presence of epoxy resin, whose chemical properties make it a very complex substance to break down into reusable components.
However, the Danish wind turbine manufacturer Vestas has developed a technique based on a new chemical process that can break down the epoxy resin into reusable materials. The chemical process was developed by a coalition of Danish universities and specialist companies. This process makes it possible to recycle the turbine blades and prevent them from ending up in landfill, as is the case for some blades today.
For Vestas, the old epoxy-based blades can now be considered a source of raw material. This means that all of the blades currently in landfill, as well as those from currently operating wind farms, can in theory be disassembled and reused to build new ones. For the wind industry, this is a key step in implementing a circular production method.
In the coming years, thousands of wind turbines will have to be decommissioned, and this development should help the industry deal with the major challenge this represents. The WindEurope organization estimates that around 25,000 tonnes of blades will no longer be operational by 2025.
More generally, Vestas aims to be carbon-neutral by 2030 and to be building zero-waste wind turbines by 2040.
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