{"id":200599,"date":"2020-02-10T21:54:11","date_gmt":"2020-02-10T18:54:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ww-vb.mine.nu\/w108\/wind-turbine-blades-cant-be-recycled-so-theyre-piling-up-in-landfills\/"},"modified":"2020-02-10T21:54:11","modified_gmt":"2020-02-10T18:54:11","slug":"wind-turbine-blades-cant-be-recycled-so-theyre-piling-up-in-landfills","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hameed.nwar.uk\/sa\/wind-turbine-blades-cant-be-recycled-so-theyre-piling-up-in-landfills\/","title":{"rendered":"Wind Turbine Blades Can\u2019t Be Recycled, So They\u2019re Piling Up in Landfills"},"content":{"rendered":"
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(Bloomberg) — A wind turbine\u2019s blades can be longer than a Boeing 747 wing, so at the end of their lifespan they can\u2019t just be hauled away. First, you need to saw through the lissome fiberglass using a diamond-encrusted industrial saw to create three pieces small enough to be strapped to a tractor-trailer.<\/p>\n
The municipal landfill in Casper, Wyoming, is the final resting place of 870 blades whose days making renewable energy have come to end. The severed fragments look like bleached whale bones nestled against one another.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s the end of it for this winter,\u201d said waste technician Michael Bratvold, watching a bulldozer bury them forever in sand. \u201cWe\u2019ll get the rest when the weather breaks this spring.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tens of thousands of aging blades are coming down from steel towers around the world and most have nowhere to go but landfills. In the U.S. alone, about 8,000 will be removed in each of the next four years.\u00a0Europe, which has been dealing with the\u00a0problem longer,\u00a0has about 3,800 coming down annually through at least 2022, according to BloombergNEF. It\u2019s going to get worse: Most were built more than a decade ago, when installations were less than a fifth of what they are now.<\/p>\n
Built to withstand hurricane-force winds, the blades can\u2019t easily be crushed, recycled or repurposed. That\u2019s created an urgent search for alternatives in places that lack wide-open prairies. In the U.S., they go to the handful of landfills that accept them, in Lake Mills, Iowa; Sioux Falls, South Dakota; and Casper, where they will be interred in stacks that reach 30 feet under.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe wind turbine blade will be there, ultimately, forever,\u201d said Bob Cappadona, chief operating officer for the North American\u00a0unit of Paris-based Veolia Environnement SA, which is searching for better ways to deal with the massive waste. \u201cMost landfills are considered a dry tomb.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe last thing we want to do is create even more environmental challenges.\u201d<\/p>\n
To prevent catastrophic climate change caused by burning fossil fuels, many governments and corporations have pledged to use only clean energy by 2050. Wind energy is one of the cheapest ways to reach that goal.<\/p>\n
The electricity comes from turbines that spin generators. Modern models emerged after the 1973 Arab oil embargo, when shortages compelled western governments to find alternatives to fossil fuels. The first wind farm in the U.S. was installed in New Hampshire in 1980, and California deployed thousands of turbines east of San Francisco across the Altamont Pass.<\/p>\n
The first models were expensive and inefficient, spinning fast and low. After 1992, when Congress passed a tax credit, manufacturers invested in taller and more powerful designs. Their steel tubes rose 260 feet and sported swooping fiberglass blades. A decade later, General Electric Co. made its 1.5 megawatt model\u2014enough to supply 1,200 homes in a stiff breeze\u2014an industry standard.<\/p>\n
Wind power is carbon-free and about 85% of turbine components, including steel, copper wire, electronics and gearing can be recycled or reused. But the fiberglass blades remain difficult to dispose of. With some as long as a football field, big rigs can only carry one at a time, making transportation costs prohibitive for long-distance hauls. Scientists are trying to find better ways to separate resins from fibers or to give small chunks new life as pellets or boards.<\/p>\n
In the European Union, which strictly regulates material that can go into landfills, some blades are burned in kilns that create cement or in power plants. But their energy content is weak and uneven and the burning fiberglass emits pollutants.<\/p>\n
In a pilot project last year, Veolia tried grinding them to dust, looking for chemicals to extract. \u201cWe came up with some crazy ideas,\u201d Cappadona said. \u201cWe want to make it a sustainable business. There\u2019s a lot of interest in this.\u201d<\/p>\n
One start-up,\u00a0Global Fiberglass Solutions, developed a method to break down blades and press them into pellets and fiber boards to be used for flooring and walls. The company\u00a0started producing samples at a plant in Sweetwater, Texas, near the continent\u2019s largest concentration of wind farms. It plans another operation in Iowa.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can process 99.9% of a blade and handle about 6,000 to 7,000 blades a year per plant,\u201d said Chief Executive Officer Don Lilly. The company has accumulated an inventory of about one year\u2019s worth of blades ready to be chopped up and recycled as demand increases, he said. \u201cWhen we start to sell to more builders, we can take in a lot more of them. We\u2019re just gearing up.\u201d<\/p>\n