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Wind Turbine Blades Can’t Be Recycled, So They’re Piling Up in Landfills

J

Jennifer

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Nov 15, 2019
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How many of you knew about this... interesting eh? Not quite as green as they're made out to be.

www.bloomberg.com

Wind Turbine Blades Can’t Be Recycled, So They’re Piling Up in Landfills

Companies are searching for ways to deal with the tens of thousands of blades that have reached the end of their lives.
www.bloomberg.com www.bloomberg.com

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This is probably much cheaper than recycling.
What can go wrong with a wind turbine blade to make it useless?
 
fega72 said:
This is probably much cheaper than recycling.
What can go wrong with a wind turbine blade to make it useless?
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Failed inspection due to cracks or whatever that could cause catastrophic failure.

Decommissioned because something else failed horribly in the generator section and caught fire.

Age regulations.

There's a few reasons.
 
By far, the biggest cause of wind turbine blade damage is the air we breath.. there isn't even a close second place from what I understand.

Not manufacturing defects, not bird strikes, not lightening or planes.. but the air.

The air we breath contains dust.. those dust particles impact the blades and wear out the leading edge, which causes them to lose the aerodynamic "lift" that is transformed into rotational energy.

While the RPM of wind turbines is fairly low, the speed at the outer edges of the radius is moving at up around 150+ miles per hour.. meaning that dust impacts the leading edge of the blade like a sand blaster..

They simply wear out.. when the pitting becomes bad enough, it does the same thing that ice does to an airplane wing.. it changes the shape of the blade and reduces its ability to to create the high and low pressure zones that give the blade lift.


erosion.png
 
At least the blades are pretty benign. You should see what goes into ash dams created by coal power plants... I'll take solar PV & wind turbines going into land fill any day of the week over what burning coal puts into the environment (into the air, land and our water).

Coal ash represents nearly 1/5th of all waste generated in Australia.
 
The blades need ss or titanium leading edge cuffs on the outer 1/3rd of blades.

Yeah, our county dumps coal ash/clinkers on the snowy roads. Mercury anyone? I’ll take my solar and wind power anyday.
 
RV10flyer said:
Yeah, our county dumps coal ash/clinkers on the snowy roads. Mercury anyone? I’ll take my solar and wind power anyday.
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Yep. When I was a kid they used to spray the PCB laden electric transformer oil on the gravel roads in northern Ohio to keep the dust down. That was next to the farms with DDT used on them.

Not to mention my Dad brought liquid mercury home from work at NASA and let us play with it.

Hit the puddle with your hand and create a bunch of small spheres. Then shove them back together and they formed a puddle again. On the kitchen table. Good times.

Ignorance was bliss.

I think not having seat belts was the least of our worries ?.
 
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I was actually considering turning one or two of them into an underground bunker. Some of the hubs on those blades are 10 to 12 feet in diameter.. cut it off where the blade gets too small and you have a 30 foot tunnel that will never rust.
 
Last time I crawled into one, it's fiberglass. So, not sure what else you can do with them.
And the blades do break and fall off. Several a year based on the ones I see when I drive though a wind farm. Split in half.
 
MurphyGuy said:
While the RPM of wind turbines is fairly low, the speed at the outer edges of the radius is moving at up around 150+ miles per hour.. meaning that dust impacts the leading edge of the blade like a sand blaster..

They simply wear out.. when the pitting becomes bad enough, it does the same thing that ice does to an airplane wing.. it changes the shape of the blade and reduces its ability to to create the high and low pressure zones that give the blade lift.
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Anything wrong with driving on retreads?
So long as the carcass didn't get overheated?

(Assuming only leading edge wear; don't want blades cracking in half.)


Or, put clear strips on your helmet visor, strip them off when vision is impaired.
 
Ampster said:
I am not worried about our landfills. I think the energy generated during their life far outweighs the few that end up in landfills. The good news is my local landfills are not filling up with turbine blades.
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So you're saying, you're ok with it, just not in 'your' landfill... LOL (just playing with you). ?
 
Hedges said:
Anything wrong with driving on retreads?
So long as the carcass didn't get overheated?

(Assuming only leading edge wear; don't want blades cracking in half.)


Or, put clear strips on your helmet visor, strip them off when vision is impaired.
Click to expand...

I don't know why they don't use a replaceable leading edge.. a thin layer of titanium or stainless? Or maybe even some kind of rubber? Or maybe the leading edge problem is just the biggest issue out of many, and the variety of other problems make putting a new edge on the blades too expensive?

I have no idea.. never studied it much..
 
I imagine the cost to ship the blades back to the manufacturer to be refurbished is more than the cost to manufacture and ship new blades?

¯\_(ツ)_/¯​

 
Q-Dog said:
I imagine the cost to ship the blades back to the manufacturer to be refurbished is more than the cost to manufacture and ship new blades?

¯\_(ツ)_/¯​

Click to expand...

The removal and replacement of the outer skin is relatively simple and cheap.

Requalifying the entire blade afterward is very costly, as every inch would have to be imaged and analyzed(ultrasound/x-ray).

New blades depend on the consistency of the manufacturing process - as long as the few spot checks show manufacturing is on target, then you don't need to look at every blade, nevermind every inch of every blade.
 
That said, there's a lot of money to be made refurbishing blades - it will take a lot of investment, and the company would have to develop an automated process that is flexible enough to manage refurbishing several different models of blades to start with, and easily add others without having to reconfigure the entire line.
 
RayfromTX said:
How much energy is created in the 20 years one of these blades is in service?
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I don't know the answer to that,
Whatever the amount is I'm fairly sure there hasn't been a corresponding drop in fossil fuel usage over those twenty years
 
It's no wonder those blade get eaten up, as where there is a lot of wind there is a lot of small hard particles being blown around just high enough for those blades to smack in to. I've seen vehicle paint jobs be eaten alive in a 30 minute dust/wind storm to the tune of thousands of $$.
 
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