Material and Structural Characterization of a Wind Turbine Blade for Use as a Bridge Girder

Ruane, Kieran; Zhang, Zoe; Nagle, Angela; Huynh, An; Alshannaq, Ammar A.; McDonald, A.; Soutsos, Marios; McKinley, Jennifer; Gentry, Russell; Bank, Lawrence C.

doi:10.1177/03611981221083619

Cited by 17 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…While concrete and steel can be easily recycled, the composites that make up the rotor blades pose a problem. This problem has been studied by Chen et al [31], Beauson et al [32], and Ruane et al [33]. It should be noted that 9.4 GW of capacity is expected to be decommissioned and retired in Europe over the next five years.…”

Section: Repowering a Wind Farmmentioning

confidence: 99%

Wind Turbine Technology Trends

et al. 2022

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The rise in prices of traditional energy sources, the high dependence of many countries on their import, and the associated need for security of supply have led to large investments in new capacity of wind power plants. Although wind power generation is a mature technology and levelized cost of electricity low, there is still room for its improvement. A review of available literature has indicated that wind turbine development in the coming decade will be based on upscaling wind turbines and minor design improvements. These include further improvements in rotor blade aerodynamics, active control of the rotor blade rotation system, and aerodynamic brakes that will lead to increased power generation efficiency. Improvements in system maintenance and early diagnosis of transmission and power-related faults and blade surface damage will reduce wind turbine downtime and increase system reliability and availability. The manufacture of wind turbines with larger dimensions presents problems of transportation and assembly, which are being addressed by manufacturing the blades from segments. Numerical analysis is increasingly being used both in wind turbine efficiency analysis and in stress and vibration analysis. Direct drive is becoming more competitive with traditional power transmission through a gearbox. The trend in offshore wind farms is to increase the size of wind turbines and to place them farther from the coast and in deeper water, which requires new forms of floating foundations. Due to the different work requirements and more difficult conditions of the marine environment, optimization methods for the construction of offshore substructures are currently being developed. There are plans to use 66-kV cables for power transmission from offshore wind farms instead of the current 33-kV cables. Offshore wind farms can play an important role in the transition to a hydrogen economy. In this context, significant capacity is planned for the production of “green” hydrogen by electrolysis from water. First-generation wind turbines are nearing the end of their service life, so strategies are being developed to repower them, extend their life or dismantle and recycle them.

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Section: Repowering a Wind Farmmentioning

confidence: 99%

Wind Turbine Technology Trends

et al. 2022

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“…Next on the waste hierarchy is blade repurposing, which involves the reuse of full blades or large sections of the blade in new industrial or architectural applications. Some examples of repurposing applications include pedestrian bridges (e.g., Blade Bridge along the Midleton-Youghal Greenway in County Cork, Ireland) [22,54,55], power transmission lines [56], children's playgrounds (e.g., Wikado playground, Rotterdam) [57], bicycle shelters (e.g., Aalborg Harbour) [58], affordable housing [41], among others [59]. Full blade repurposing implies that the entire blade will be reused in one or more applications and will therefore yield a 100% reuse potential.…”

Section: Recycling Technologies and Potential Materials That Can Be '...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Sustainability Implications of Current Approaches to End-of-Life of Wind Turbine Blades—A Review

Delaney,

Leahy,

McKinley

et al. 2023

Sustainability

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In recent years, the sustainability of wind power has been called into question because there are currently no truly sustainable solutions to the problem of how to deal with the non-biodegradable fibre-reinforced polymer (FRP) composite wind blades (sometimes referred to as “wings”) that capture the wind energy. The vast majority of wind blades that have reached their end-of-life (EOL) currently end up in landfills (either in full-sized pieces or pulverized into smaller pieces) or are incinerated. The problem has come to a head in recent years since many countries (especially in the EU) have outlawed, or expect to outlaw in the near future, one or both of these unsustainable and polluting disposal methods. An increasing number of studies have addressed the issue of EOL blade “waste”; however, these studies are generally of little use since they make predictions that do not account for the manner in which wind blades are decommissioned (from the time the decision is made to retire a turbine (or a wind farm) to the eventual disposal or recycling of all of its components). This review attempts to lay the groundwork for a better understanding of the decommissioning process by defining how the different EOL solutions to the problem of the blade “waste” do or do not lead to “sustainable decommissioning”. The hope is that by better defining the different EOL solutions and their decommissioning pathways, a more rigorous research base for future studies of the wind blade EOL problem will be possible. This paper reviews the prior studies on wind blade EOL and divides them into a number of categories depending on the focus that the original authors chose for their EOL assessment. This paper also reviews the different methods chosen by researchers to predict the quantities of future blade waste and shows that depending on the choice of method, predictions can be different by orders of magnitude, which is not good as this can be exploited by unscrupulous parties. The paper then reviews what different researchers define as the “recycling” of wind blades and shows that depending on the definition, the percentage of how much material is actually recycled is vastly different, which is also not good and can be exploited by unscrupulous parties. Finally, using very recent proprietary data (December 2022), the paper illustrates how the different definitions and methods affect predictions on global EOL quantities and recycling rates.

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“…As reported in multiple research publications recycling wind turbine blade is challenging, due to various factors such as the material composition of blades, the diversity in blades in terms of geometry, dimension and material content or the difficulty to transform blade into valuable recycled materials [1,2,3,4,5]. To find solutions, part of the research has been dedicated to the development of recycling processes, such as re-purposing blades into new structural applications, recycling using mechanical, thermal or chemical processes [6,7,8,9,10]. However, in recent years, it has become clear that along recycling processes, estimating the amount of waste available is essential to establish reliable recycling solutions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Method for estimating the future annual mass of decommissioned wind turbine blade material in Denmark

Abrahamsen

Beauson

Lund

et al. 2023

Preprint

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A model of the evolution of the onshore wind turbine blade mass installed in Denmark is proposed described by a Weibull distribution and the age of the blades is estimated from decommissioning data to t = 29 years when half of the blade mass of an installation year has been decommissioned. This is considerable longer than the 20 year design life time of onshore turbines, which is often assumed to be an estimate of the End-of-Life of turbine blades. Thus blade waste predictions using the simple assumption may predict that installed blade masses are entering recycling processes about 9 years sooner that what is observed in Denmark. The blade mass for decommissioning in Denmark is estimate to peak at 2000 ton/year and 5000 ton/year in 2028 and 2045 using the Weibull model.

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Material and Structural Characterization of a Wind Turbine Blade for Use as a Bridge Girder

Cited by 17 publications

References 11 publications

Wind Turbine Technology Trends

Wind Turbine Technology Trends

Sustainability Implications of Current Approaches to End-of-Life of Wind Turbine Blades—A Review

Method for estimating the future annual mass of decommissioned wind turbine blade material in Denmark

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