RECYCLABLEBLADE

Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy, (Denmark)

Partner(s) : Aditya Birla Advanced Materials, India

Key Benefits:

• Low-energy demanding recycling process

• Reduces life cycle impacts

• Lowers end-of-life costs

• Leaves no waste, only resources

• Easy to adopt, designed for long blades

Siemens Gamesa, in partnership with Aditya Birla Advanced Materials has designed, manufactured, and are ready to install the first offshore wind turbine blades that can be easily dissolved & recycled

Lightweight structures are key for designing competitive wind blades and turbines. Composites are the best compromise between weight and strength and are the leading technology within wind industry. The composites are built with resins that are strong and durable, but difficult to degrade and recycle. The majority of decommissioned blades go to landfill.

To overcome the end-of-life problems, a new type of resin system has been used for the manufacture or the RecyclableBlade. Aditya Birla´s Recyclamine® technology is a resin system with built-in recyclability, which can be triggered by external conditions. It gives a perfect combination of structural properties in the composite, stability under various conditions, fit to the IntegralBlade® manufacturing process, and easy and fast recyclability. The new resin system is a drop-in replacement for conventional resin systems both for the design and manufacturing process of wind blades.

The RecyclableBlade offers the same high quality and lifetime Siemens Gamesa is known for. After decommissioning, the blade can be recycled by dissolving the matrix under mild acidic conditions, thus preventing unnecessary landfill. The reinforcements, core materials, plastics and metal parts can be easily recovered in good quality and value. The matrix is recovered as thermoplastic material with an interesting profile of properties. The recovered matrix and reinforcement can then be reused in appropriate applications.

The RecyclableBlade is a major achievement to make wind energy an even more sustainable business.