GE Produces Longest Eco-Friendly Wind Turbine Blade at 62m Capable of 100% Recycling and Reusing

[Caribbeans]

GE Produces Longest Eco-Friendly Wind Turbine Blade at 62m Capable of 100% Recycling and Reusing

published: 2022-04-15

The recycling of wind turbine blades has been troubling wind turbine suppliers and countries for a long time, where the composite materials contained within the blades make it even more difficult in achieving recycling and reusing. Fortunately, GE has now managed to develop the longest thermoplastic wind turbine blades in the world that are capable of full recycling.

Wind power generation is an important segment of energy transformation, though the enormous level of green electricity and environmental benefits are also accompanied by environmental issues from incorrect disposal methods. With the inclusion of glass-reinforced polymer composites (GRP) in wind turbines in particular, and the differentiation in designs between various suppliers, wind turbine blades are usually incinerated or dumped at landfills under consideration of cost and convenience.

As pointed out by the previous study of the University of Cambridge, there will be 43 million tons of wind turbine waste around the world by 2050. The Zero Waste Blade Research has thus been born and was initiated in September 2020, with members comprising of CNRS, Arkema, LM Wind Power (subsidiary of GE), CANOE, and Engie, who are currently studying on the production of wind turbine blades through materials that are even more sustainable.

LM Wind Power also managed to produce the prototype of the longest wind turbine blade at 62m recently through Arkema’s thermoplastic resin “Elium”, which not only facilitates 100% recycling through chemical treatment, where depolymerized materials are transformed into the original form of resin that can be reused, but is also on par with the lightweight and durable thermosetting resin in terms of performance...
https://www.energytrend.com/news/20220415-27409.html

GE Official press release:

ZEBRA project achieves key milestone with production of the first prototype of its recyclable wind turbine blade

The 62m blade was made using Arkema’s Elium® resin, which is a thermoplastic resin well known for its recyclable properties together with the new high performance Glass Fabrics from Owens Corning...
https://www.ge.com/news/press-releases/zebra-project-achieves-key-milestone-with-production-of-first-prototype-of-recyclable-wind-turbine-blade

So before, turbine blades were difficult/impossible to recycle, and those that are against wind turbines used this to try to make the point that wind energy was not fit for the long term.

But - it's 2022- and now they can be recycled. So those opposed to wind turbines now must find a new talking point. (hint- dead birds won't work, check the Audubon society)

It's called progress, something that used to happen all the time in the US, before war became the obsession.

[NNadir]

1. Note the diesel huge truck and the sources of Elium resin.

The chemistry of this fossil fuel based resin is found here:

Study of the role of initiator content in the polymerization reaction of a thermoplastic liquid resin for advanced composite manufacturing. The resin is a copolymer of 2-propene carboxylic acid methyl esters and acrylic acid, all products of the dangerous fossil fuel industry, an industry that the much hyped and very dirty wind industry has done nothing to suppress.

Using fossil fuel diesel trucks to haul this toxic lump of dangerous fossil fuel material, and the running the diesel powered bulldozers to trash virgin ecosystems with access roads and concrete is not "green." It's quite the opposite. It's willful destruction for no good end.

This crap only obviates Vaclav Smil's remarks:

Vaclav Smil: What I See When I See A Wind Turbine.



Recycling takes energy and the inability of the wind industry, even after the expenditure of trillions of dollars and millions of hours of hype distributed on electronic and other public media, to produce significant energy is legend.

We're at 420 ppm concentrations of the dangerous fossil fuel waste carbon dioxide - the wind industry depends wholly and totally on the continued use of these fuels - and all the bullshit in the world won't change that fact.

[Finishline42]

3. What kind of trucks are used to haul the 20 tons of fuel rods

From where they are made to each of the close to 100 reactors every year?

[NNadir]

6. The incredible energy density of nuclear fuel makes it trivial, not that apologists for fossil...

...fuels, representing every advocate of the environmentally tragic wind industry, would notice with their disgusting selective attention.

After more than half a century running hundreds of reactors in this country, the total mass of used nuclear fuel is about 82,000 metric tons, none of which has killed anyone, although air heads continually worry about it while not giving a rat's ass about how many people die each year from dangerous fossil fuel waste, or, alternatively how many people are injured by it or by climate change.

This works out to about 1,620 tons per year for used nuclear fuel over a 50 year period in the United States.

How much do we haul through destroyed wilderness for the wind industry?

It is said that a 1.5 MW (peak power which is never reached) GE wind turbine blade assembly weighs 36 tons, and the entire system, including the steel for the tower, weighs 164 tons.

The corresponding weights for the Vestas V90 are 75, 40, and 152, total 267 tons; and for the Gamesa G87 72, 42, and 220, total 334 tons.

Note that none of this includes all of the copper that has to be mined to connect all of this useless junk together, creating a fire risk.

Wind turbines last less than about 20 years before they are landfill - all the "recycling bullshitnot withstanding - and they have never, not once, in half a century of mindless cheering and the expenditure of trillions of dollars, produced 10 exajoules of the roughly 600 exajoules of energy humanity consumes each year.

Not once.

If we build just ten of these destructive and useless Gamsea pieces of shit, we will have easily outstripped all the diesel fuel used to haul all of the nuclear fuel so hauled around each year for half a century.

Regrettably, we are not building "just ten" of these pieces of shit. We are building thousands upon thousands of them, and constructing back up dangerous natural gas plants, liquified natural gas terminals, and worse to back this crap up.

Then there are the thousands upon thousands and thousands of square km of ecosystems that have to be trashed, often to produce less power than a single nuclear plant can produce in a few hectares.

The selective attention of the "I'm not an anti-nuke" anti-nuke set, their contempt for facts, their ignorance of industrial process, their contempt for environmental issues, and their related inattention to detail and lack of education would be laughable if people weren't dying all over India because of massive regions suffering under extreme heat.

Dehli.

Let me guess, this situation is vastly outweighed from trucks hauling 20 or 30 tons nuclear fuel to each nuclear plant every three years.

Right?

We've needed so many times to recall Joseph Welch's remark to McCarthy in a more modern context:

You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?

Apparently not, in this context.

None of these deaths, nor any of the deaths in fucking British Columbia, of all places, from extreme heat last summer have changed a whit of this selective "wind energy will save the world and nuclear energy sucks" rhetoric. Anti-nukes cannot view anything other than their irrational and frankly deadly hatred of nuclear energy.

It hasn't saved the world. It isn't saving the world, or is there an "I'm not an anti-nuke" anti-nuke around to tell us that 420 ppm of carbon dioxide in the planetary atmosphere is a victory?

April 30: 419.40 ppm
April 29: 419.86 ppm
April 28: 419.16 ppm
April 27: 419.56 ppm
April 26: 422.06 ppm
Last Updated: May 1, 2022

Recent Daily Average Mauna Loa CO2

Are there anti-nukes here who give a shit?

No?

Why am I not surprised?

Happily, the world, seeing how anti-nuke rhetoric has been funding Vladimir Putin for a billion dollars a day (our anti-nuke German friends who just can't live with Russian gas) is waking up.

Here's a partial list of countries that couldn't give a fuck about the toxic and deadly selective attention of the anti-nuke squad - a set of people who hate what they are incompetent to understand - a list of nations that don't give a shit about anti-nuke rhetoric in "Nuclear Free" forums and websites and "renewaable energy will save us" websites:

Poland

Estonia

China

Slovakia

Canada

Argentina

Oh, and a prominent North American country led by a wonderful President: The United States

...the list is longer...but why waste time on the ethically indifferent?

Have a nice evening.

[Caribbeans]

5. Those trucks will be powered by zero-emission hydrogen - sooner rather than later

Hyundai hydrogen trucks operating now in Switzerland

Hyzon hydrogen trucks will be operating soon in California

Toyota's hydrogen trucks have been operating out of the Port of Long Beach for a few years now

Wind turbines that make hydrogen directly are coming

[NNadir]

7. Bullshit.

[Finishline42]

2. Nice find

It was just an engineering problem...

Which means it was just a matter of time and investment.

[DavidDvorkin]

4. "Those opposed to wind turbines now must find a new talking point."

They'll just make something up. It won't take them much time, either.

[CentralMass]

8. Just think of the cancer it will cause.

[DavidDvorkin]

9. Many people are saying so!