My favorite thing about my job is getting to learn about something completely new and amazing. In today's installment of that, I present to you the engineers who are figuring out how to turn discarded wind turbine blades into infrastructure grist.org/energy/todays-…
A bit of background: Most parts of a wind turbine are very easy to recycle and repurpose bc they're made of stuff like steel, copper, and aluminum. But the blades are weird composites of plastic, fibers, wood and glue that are hard to take apart and even harder to recycle.
As a result, they often wind up in landfills. They're winding up there way before the turbines themselves are decommissioned, because wind farm owners are constantly upgrading the blades to bigger sizes to get more power.
Why is this a problem? Mostly, because of their size. Wind turbine blades are HUGE. Imagine something as long as a football field that weighs as much as a whale. Now imagine you have 50 of them you need to dispose of. It's a problem.
What we really should be doing is repurposing the blades, which take energy and resources to produce. And turns out there's an obvious solution: use them to build new stuff.
Blades are very sturdy and lightweight, making them ideal for all kinds of applications.
Blades are very sturdy and lightweight, making them ideal for all kinds of applications.
In Ireland, they're being turned into bridge girders. In Kansas, electrical power towers. They might be used to make affordable housing, noise barriers, skate parks, artificial reefs, and more static1.squarespace.com/static/5b324c4…
Lots of other cool research and demonstration projects underway to figure out how to make future blades more recyclable and manage end of life waste. They can even be turned into cement! I'll stop tweeting my entire article now so you can read it :)
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