But when it’s time to decommission one, a wind turbine’s power can turn into a weak point. Because the blades are designed to be so sturdy, the supplies used to construct them can’t at present be recycled. And about 43 million tons of those blades shall be decommissioned by 2050.
The new work describes a approach to recuperate the principle parts of wind turbine blades, breaking down the plastic that holds them collectively with out destroying the fabric’s main constructing blocks.
“We need sustainable energy, but we also have to consider the waste, and we have to find solutions for that,” says Alexander Ahrens, a postdoctoral researcher at Aarhus University in Denmark and the lead writer of the brand new examine.
Wind turbine blades are made with sturdy plastic known as epoxy resin. Because of the chemical bonds created when epoxy resin solidifies, it might probably’t be melted and squished into a brand new form to be reused, just like the plastic that makes up water bottles or milk jugs. In this case, fibers are additionally blended into the resin for additional power. This type of strengthened materials—known as fiberglass when the supporting fibers are made utilizing glass—is usually used for high-intensity functions like airplane wings and boats.
“Because these materials are so durable, there’s not really right now a technology that is fit for recycling them,” Ahrens says.
Some strategies do exist for breaking down fiberglass, however these approaches normally render the epoxy portion unusable and infrequently harm the glass fibers as properly. The researchers at Aarhus got down to develop a way light sufficient to let the principle parts be used once more.
The ensuing strategy takes intention at chemical bonds that lock the plastic into place and “chews them up like Pac-Man—just chews up the epoxy and liberates those glass fibers,” says Troels Skrydstrup, a professor of chemistry at Aarhus and one other writer of the brand new examine.
To break down the epoxy supplies, researchers submerged them in a mix of solvents and added a catalyst, which helped speed up the chemical response. They heated every little thing as much as 160 °C (320 °F) for between 16 hours and several other days, till the goal materials was totally damaged down.