Vestas, a wind power equipment supplier, announced that it has completed a full set of recycling process research for epoxy resin composite materials.
Traditionally, wind turbine blades have been made from epoxy resin composites. With the first batch of wind turbines coming to the end of their operational lives, the European wind energy association WindEurope predicts that around 25,000 tonnes of blades will be decommissioned each year from 2025 onwards.
Synthetic materials are complex and difficult to decompose and recycle, posing a threat to the environment. The industry generally agrees that in order for wind turbine blades to be recyclable at the end of their life, a new material or manufacturing method is required.
To this end, wind turbine giants have invested in research. In September 2021, Siemens Gamesa officially released a fully recyclable fan blade called “RecyclableBlade”, which has been applied to the Kaskasi project in Germany;
Wind Power has manufactured the first thermoplastic 100% recyclable blades at its blade factory in Ponferrada, Spain.
However, Vestas chose another route – researching recycling methods for epoxy resin composites. This process eliminates the material restrictions on the recycling of wind turbine blades, and can realize recycling without changing the material composition or design of existing blades, which not only saves the cost of process transformation, but also does not need to bear the risk of quality problems caused by blade material changes.
Lisa, Vice President and Head of Sustainability, Vestas
“We can use old epoxy blades as the raw material for new blades, whether they are scrap blades in the landfill or operating blades can be recycled and reused. A new era in the wind power industry is coming,” Ekstrand said.
The process is the result of the CETEC (Circular Economy for Thermoset Epoxy Composites) project, which starts in 2021 and is led by Vestas with partners including epoxy resin manufacturer Olin, the Danish Technical Institute (DTI) and Aarhus University, Denmark
University). In the next step, Vestas plans to realize the commercial application of this chemical recycling process by cooperating with Olin and the recycling company Stena Recycling.
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