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

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 $$.
 
I read another article that said that landfills make perfect sites for solar PV farms. If turbine blades are indeed filling up landfills all the better.
 
Why don't they just make the leading edge of the blade with a simple bolt-on replaceable metal cover?
 
On the rinky-dink side of things I like the missouri wind and solar generators because they sell aluminum blades and steel bodies. When/if it brakes I'll get some material to make little projects out of!
 
brandnewb said:
are these the guys with the youtube videos that absululty do not stick their money where their mouth is or are these guys legit? (rpm/output graph with warranties)
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I'm not sure, but I like their build quality and approach. I haven't seen a lot of independent views of their products from trusted sources so I know I'll be taking a bit of a risk. My own experience with wind is that it needs to be in a very high location, double the height of anything on the ground that can impact the airflow. I can see why, by the time you add up the tower costs, installation, turbine cost, and maintenance it's a really hard sell versus adding more batteries and solar.
 
Part of the problem with these blades are their size/transportation issues. To send one off to a place to be rebuilt requires twice the transportation.

Another part is if one is running full force and it comes apart it can land a significant distance away and with great force. Which means you can't (shouldn't) run ones that are compromised.

Back 25 years ago we had to put some sort of protective leading egdge on Blackhawk rotors to keep the sand from cutting right thru them. It worked.

Hueys had metal leading edges and could take far more of a beating (in many ways).

Maybe the problem is far more complex than this. Maybe we should make them better, and, smaller?

Problem is, this system is in place and the optics (politics) would mean change would be slow.
 
Too bad they cut them into pieces.
If left whole they could be buried little ways and stick up around towns in "Tornado Alley".
Kind of like a stall fence on a wing. :ROFLMAO:

I'm gonna be famous when some Mayor decides to build a "Tornado Fence".
 
I wonder if they could shred the fiber material, add new epoxy / hardener, and make a cheap version of recycled fiberglass (or whatever material). There's got to be a decent market for prefab fiber panels.

It could probably be ground up and and used as insulation as well ?. There's GOT to be something to do with them.
 
A.Justice said:
I wonder if they could shred the fiber material, add new epoxy / hardener, and make a cheap version of recycled fiberglass (or whatever material). There's got to be a decent market for prefab fiber panels.

It could probably be ground up and and used as insulation as well ?. There's GOT to be something to do with them.
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It wouldn't be cheaper than fiberglass panels made from virgin fiberglass and epoxy. Once you include all the other parts - paint, metal, repairs, etc there's no consistency, and making a binder that provides a consistent product from shredded wind turbine blades isn't likely to happen, or be cheap if one is created. Further, it might not work for all blades given different manufacturers use different processes and epoxies in the original and repairs, and in many cases the composition of those binders is a trade secret, so not only are they different, but you can't even get enough info from a given manufacturer to devise a compatible epoxy.

The thing that's being done is the wind energy companies are paying someone to dispose of them, and the disposal companies are profiting thereby. The cutting happens at the wind turbine site so shipping is cheaper. Glass is cheap, there's no cheap way to recover the epoxy/binders/chemicals/paint, and so the only chance at recycling is if there's a use for them as-is, and there simply isn't at this time.
 
Could be cheaper than garbage rate, however.
How about as lightweight aggregate in concrete?
 
None of these ideas are bad, or wrong. If you want to pay extra to use recycled materials in your products you can do so already. Companies are already recycling blades into fiberglass panels and concrete aggregate: https://blog.ucsusa.org/james-gignac/wind-turbine-blades-recycling/

But all of these ideas, so far, are more expensive and produce a lower quality product than already existing product on the market that doesn't use those recycled materials.

Assuming you can get 20 yards of material out of a single blade, assuming that blade lifetime is 20 years, and there are 350,000 wind turbines in the world, then across the entire planet you only have 3,000 yards of material available to be recycled daily. If they were all in one place, or even one country, that might be worthwhile, but even Texas - the US state with the most wind turbines, would only have 180 yards of material to process a day, total, and shipping them hundreds of miles within the state is still very expensive. Combine gas prices with 6 mpg heavy trucks and you've got an expensive proposition.

A small 7 acre gravel pit would produce about 2,000 yards per day, and people pay only about $2/yard not including loading, screening, and transportation. (source: https://permies.com/t/55780/Small-gravel-pit-property-income )

So at best it would be a niche business, and would have to be subsidized - either by those who buy the end product, or through government dictate.
 
Lets look at it different...

Its idiotic to build big ol blades and then to put them in the dirt due to the impact this has on the planet.

Yeh, it might be "cheaper" to dig up gravel to make concrete out of when we could reuse these...

From my experience fiberglass burns like hella hot. I'm sure a incenerator could be made that was even portable and made power while in use, and you could store these blades until enough were in a area and them one truck could bring in the incenerator and burn them while making power. The left over fiberglass wouln't amount to nearly the amount of a blade and could easily be used again if you wanted.

Just one way we could probably go about keeping them out of landfills.

Is the cost to the planet not worth it?
 
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