The Institute for Advanced Composites Manufacturing and Innovation Circular Economy for Wind Workshop Report

Technical Report · Thu Oct 07 04:00:00 EDT 2021

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/1879228· OSTI ID:1879228

Rencheck, Mitchell L. ^[1]; Korey, Matthew ^[1]; Ghobrial, Lillie ^[1]; Berry, Derek ^[2]; Ozcan, Soydan ^[1]

---

1. Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
2. National Renewable Energy Lab. (NREL), Golden, CO (United States)

Wind turbine blade waste is anticipated to amount to approximately 2.2 million tons or more by 2050 (more than the equivalent weight of 6 empire state buildings). However, no existing recycling technologies for the composites in wind turbines are currently at cost-parity with landfilling. As such, there is little industrial drive to recycle these materials, so they are currently buried. If it were possible to develop a circular economy for wind blades it could directly reduce material feedstock costs for many composites industries, facilitate the tremendous, anticipated growth of the domestic off-shore wind energy sector, and help the U.S. achieve net-zero manufacturing and energy generation. However, to enable circular economies for wind blades, several questions need to be answered.

• Research Organization: Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States); National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Golden, CO (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE
• DOE Contract Number: AC05-00OR22725; AC36-08GO28308
• OSTI ID: 1879228
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

17 WIND ENERGY