Consortium awarded funding for cross-sector turbine blade recycling project

The consortium behind DecomBlades consists of Ørsted, LM Wind Power, Vestas Wind Systems, Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy, FLSmidth, MAKEEN Power, HJHansen Recycling, Energy Cluster Denmark, University of Southern Denmark, and Technical University of Denmark. Together, the partners represent the value chain required to establish a recycling industry for composite materials – from supply, to processing, to implementation.

Today 85% to 95% of a wind turbine can be recycled, but cost-efficient recycling of composite materials remains a challenge. On a global scale, an estimated 2.5M tonnes of composite materials are currently in use in wind turbines.

LM Wind Power senior director of engineering excellence and chair of the DecomBlades steering committee John Korsgaard said, “The wind power industry is committed to finding a sustainable way to dispose of decommissioned wind turbine blades. To create viable, sustainable, cost-efficient solutions for recycling blades, it is essential that composite materials from them can be incorporated into resource streams and processed.”

In DecomBlades, the project partners will investigate and develop solutions to recycle composites in blades. It focuses on three specific processes: shredding blades such that the material can be reused in different products and processes; using shredded blade material in cement production; and pyrolysis, which separates material at high temperatures.