A thermodynamic perspective on wind turbine glass fiber waste as a supplementary cementitious material

Glass Fiber Waste from Wind Turbines: Its Chemistry, Properties, and End-of-life Uses

“…Although wind power is a lower-carbon option for energy generation than hydrocarbons, strategies are needed to deal with the Glass Fiber Waste from Wind Turbines: Its Chemistry, Properties, and End-of-life Uses DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.108855 growing waste stream. One such strategy is recycling the GF portion of wind turbine waste for use as a supplementary cementitious material (SCM) [8]. While GFRP has previously been used by the cement industry for several applications it has not been commercially used as an SCM.…”

“…The resin portion of the GFRP in the wind turbine blade is used as fuel to heat the cement kiln, which offsets a portion of fossil fuel that would otherwise be used for this purpose. The clinker (powder) material in the cement feedstock is then replaced by the GF portion of the which reduces raw material consumption [8,20].…”

“…1400°C) and passed through a perforated bushing before mechanical attenuation and fiberization [34,35]. The resulting fibers exhibit varying compositions that depend on the initial proportions of raw materials, but are generally high in silica, calcium, and aluminum oxides (Table 2 and Figure 6) [8].…”

“…Chemical compositions for GF used in general applications [16,[36][37][38] as well as wind-turbine-specific applications [19,39] are characterized in literature (Table 2 and Figure 6). Glosser et al [8] condensed the compositional variation of GF into three notional end member compositions that are statistically representative of GF used in wind turbines and normalized to 100% to account for differences in reporting of LOI and resin between the derivative studies (Table 2). As seen in both Figure 6 Table 2, despite the variation in specific GF compositions, the primary chemical constituents of GF used in wind turbines -SiO 2, CaO, and Al 2 O 3 -are congruent with those of OPC and SCMs like fly ash and slag.…”

“…This chapter also recapitulates and discusses the results of a study on its prospective revalorization as a supplementary cementitious material (SCM). The strategic re-use of wind turbine GF in cement has the potential to not only to deal with this challenging waste stream, but also to offset the carbon emissions from cement clinkering [8].…”