Wind turbine blades made from glass fiber-reinforced polymer (GFRP) laminate composites can serve for up to 25 years. After that, they end up in landfills which has become a real challenge for the renewable energy industry. Researchers have proposed a method for wind turbine blades' recycling. Using pyrolysis, they broke the composite materials into their constituent parts. According to scientists, the extracted materials can be reused, and the process is virtually waste-free.
A group of researchers from Kaunas University of Technology (KTU) and the Lithuanian Energy Institute proposed a method for wind turbine blades' recycling. Using pyrolysis, they broke the composite materials into their constituent parts -- i.e., phenol and fibre. According to scientists, the extracted materials can be reused, and the process is virtually waste-free. Wind turbine blades made from glass fibre-reinforced polymer (GFRP) laminate composites can serve for up to 25 years. After that they end up in landfills -- GFRP is recognised as hard-to-break-down. This has become a real challenge for the renewable energy industry. It is estimated that wind turbine blades account for 10 per cent of Europe's fibre-reinforced composite material waste. Researchers claim that by 2050, wind turbine blade waste will increase to around two million tonnes globally. With many countries banning composite materials from their landfills, recycling the used wind turbine blades becomes a challenge that researchers around the world are trying to solve. "The aim of cutting global greenhouse gas emissions to close to zero by 2050 has been voiced several years ago. Since then, more and more countries have been committing to the net-zero goal by investing in renewable energy resources, including wind energy. However, the recycling of the wind turbine blades, which are as long as a football field, very sturdy and include plastic, is the main problem. Without a feasible solution to it, we cannot say that wind energy is fully sustainable and environmentally friendly," says Dr Samy Yousef, a researcher at Kaunas University of Technology (KTU), Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Design. Aiming to tackle this challenge, the research group headed by Dr Yousef have…