Renewable energy harvesting devices are also generating waste rapidly as their life ends. As most of the wind turbines end up in landfills, researchers develop wind turbine blades made from recyclable resin.
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in the US Department of Energy have developed a new type of resin. They are planning to use it for manufacturing bio-derivable wind blades. With this, they want to make the components reusable and recycled chemically. If the new resin can perform as expected, it will reduce landfill waste from old wind turbines.
Named PECAN (PolyEster Covalently Adaptable Network), this new resin is made from bio-derivable resources and performs better with the current industry standard of blades which are made from a thermostat resin. According to NREL, the bio-derivable resin’s performance surpasses certain thermoplastic resins which claim to be recyclable.
A prototype 9-meter blade was prepared to demonstrate the manufacturability of the biomass-derivable PECAN. The resin developed was made from bio-derivable sugars. The composites made from PECAN resin held their shape and withstood accelerated weatherization validation. It can also be made within a timeframe which is similar to the existing cure cycle for how blades are currently manufactured.
As per a research, wind turbines blades can work as giant batteries, says Sinonus.
With present technology, the average life of wind blades is around 20 years and then they are mechanically recycled. Commonly they are shredded to be used as concrete filler. But with PECAN, the recyclability of the blades will be possible with a mild chemical process. According to the researchers, the chemical process to completely break down the prototype of wind turbine blades made from recyclable resin blades took only 6 hours.
Source: Manufacture and testing of biomass-derivable thermosets for wind blade recycling