There may, finally, be some use for all those accumulating used wind turbine blades.

[NNadir]

The paper to which I'll refer in this post is this one: Upcycling of Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymer for Thermal Management Application Fujie Wang, Peiling Kang, and Shuangqiao Yang Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research 2024 63 (16), 7196-7205

As I have frequently pointed out, the wind industry, besides its reliability problem, has a liability problem, the accumulation of huge amounts of composite polymers associated with the massive vanes.

I calculated, some time back, based on the Master Register of Wind Turbines that was maintained by the Danish Energy Agency up until 2022, that the average life of a wind turbine is substantially less than 20 years:

A Commentary on Failure, Delusion and Faith: Danish Data on Big Wind Turbines and Their Lifetimes.

It appears that the Danes have stopped updating the Master Register, possibly because it was bad for the wind business in that country, Denmark, where another big source of revenue is offshore oil and gas drilling.

Anyway, massive used wind turbine blades, composite materials (which shed plastics in use) are piling up all over the world, and for a long time, it's been very difficult to figure out what to do with them.

From the paper cited at the outset:

Carbon fiber reinforced composite (CFRP) materials have gained wide utilization in diverse sectors such as aerospace, automobile manufacturing, and wind power generation due to their excellent rigidity, specific strength, low density, and good corrosion resistance. (1−3) Nonetheless, the recycling of these materials is beset with challenges. Primarily, the three-dimensional network cross-linked structure intrinsic to thermosetting resins imparts them with dimensional stability, robust mechanical properties, and resistance to chemical/creep phenomena. (4) However, this chemical structure poses hurdles to facile reprocessing and reuse. The second concern revolves around how to remove the polymer for the reuse of embedded carbon fiber, which constitutes the cost-intensive fraction of carbon fiber reinforced composites. The current recovery methods chiefly encompass physical, thermal, and chemical solvent approaches. (5−8) Chemical recovery entails the dissolution of specific chemical bonds (e.g., ester bonds, ether bonds) within the resin matrix through selective solvents, thereby enabling fiber separation from the composite material. (9) Nevertheless, the intricate nature of the chemical recycling process engenders intricacy and cost, currently limiting its scope to laboratory scales. The thermal recycling strategy involves the reclamation of carbon fibers from CFRP composites through high-temperature aerobic or anaerobic procedures, (10) albeit often at the expense of fiber surface impairment and consequent mechanical property deterioration. Physical recycling primarily involves composite waste fragmentation, followed by grinding, screening, filtering, and collection to obtain fiber-enriched and powder-enriched components. This approach yields predominantly bulk molding compounds (BMCs), dough molding compounds (DMCs), and construction materials (e.g., artificial wood, asphalt, and cement)...

...Thermal conductive materials play a pivotal role as functional components extensively deployed in heat exchange, electronic heat dissipation, and other critical domains. (12) The development of high thermal conductive composite materials bears paramount importance. (13,14) Polymers, characterized by their lightweight nature, cost-effectiveness, and facile processability, serve as excellent substrates for heat-conductive composites. (15) However, the inherent amorphous structure and facile phonon scattering in polymers typically result in low thermal conductivity levels (0.1–0.3 W/mK). (16−18) Notably, the incorporation of thermally conductive filler into polymer has garnered substantial attention due to the facile processability of the resultant composite and the good thermal conductivity exhibited by the polymer–filler combination...

Effective means of heat transfer is a key to a sustainable world in my view, a key element of process intensification by which we may use nuclear heat to raise energy efficiency to unprecedented levels not presently seen in thermal devices, thus lowering the cost of energy and allowing for the benefits of access to energy to be extended to the billions of people who lack it.

The process offered by the authors involves mechanical milling of various types, followed by chemical incorporation of boron nitride into the resulting matrix.

There is a fad floating around claiming that the solution to the intractable energy problem that is literally choking and burning the planet as a whole is to "electrify everything." In my view, this is a terrible idea, since electricity by its very nature is thermodynamically degraded. Thermal energy, by contrast, is as close to primary energy as one gets, and the use of heat exchange networks can recovery exergy from thermal energy now treated as waste, and in fact, can reduce the problems associated with thermal management.

The wind fad, which is not sustainable, is going to leave huge piles of waste, and it is nice to think that there is a path to putting these materials to use in a far cleaner nuclear powered world, should the world come to its senses, not a good bet, but a feasible bet.

[calimary]

1. This makes me think of the eventual colonization of Mars. Or the moon.

It’s definitely something in our future. Could there be a way to use some of this waste and recycled and “reharvested” materials for building off-Earth structures that could presumably support life.

Could those used wind turbine blades be put to use for that purpose in some way? As building components, stacked or fitted or connected or - something?

Just guessing, but it’s hard to imagine that those discarded wind turbine components are gonna just sit, stacked or piled up, and unreusable.

[druidity33]

2. Ever read the book...

Cradle To Cradle by McDonough and Braungart? I've often wondered when focused on problems like this why people aren't bent towards using up-cyclable materials. You know, fashion a product with its next lives already planned for.