REWIND

Issues

As the wind energy sector booms, the disposal of end-of-life turbine blades poses an environmental challenge. These blades, composed of polyester/epoxy resins and glass and carbon fiber, end up in landfills or incinerators. With thousands of blades expected to reach the end of their lifespan in the coming years, sustainable solutions are necessary. In this context, the EU-funded REWIND project aims to develop cutting-edge technologies for dismantling, repurposing and recycling turbine blades, paving the way for a more circular approach to wind energy. By dissecting and evaluating the properties of the materials used, the project seeks to repurpose or recycle them effectively. Demonstrators in the windblades, construction and automotive sectors will showcase potential applications.

Objective

REWIND aims at developing critical technologies for dismantling end-of-life (EoL) wind turbine blades (WTB) (evaluation, advanced cutting, etc.) and implementing new methodologies for composites repurposing and recycling (catalytic pyrolysis and solvolysis) to increase the circularity of WTB, increasing the industrial applications of the EoL composites, and avoiding the current landfilling or incineration. The main composition of the composite waste is expected to be epoxy resin/carbon fibre (CF), epoxy resin/glass fibre (GF) and polyester resin/GF. The new methodologies will address the following challenges:

• Study and development of suitable disassembly, quality inspection and characterisation of the composite waste, to be able to understand composite waste properties. As a result, it will be possible to decide if composite parts from EoL products should be repurposed or recycled depending on their value.
• Show potential high-value applications for composite end-of-life: repurposing will be demonstrated through manufacturing 2 demonstrators (for construction and automotive sector). This will be done by matching specified requirements with dismantled materials using software and hardware tools to facilitate the fragmentation processes.
• New innovative pyrolysis and solvolysis methods for recycling will be developed and tested to significantly reduce the processing temperature and time for those parts that cannot be used in repurposing. This will allow to save energy, and together with the post-treatments, improving the quality of the materials recovered (e.g. weaved fibres, sized fibres, recycled polyester resin, recycled epoxy resin and epoxy vitrimer resins based on recycled monomers). Secondary raw materials obtained will be used to manufacture 2 demonstrators for wind energy sector: a small wind blade root section and composites patches for blades repairing. REWIND technologies should be scalable to process high volumes of waste in the near future.

Funder :

Partenaires

FUNDACION TEKNIKER • MILJOSKAERM APS • HOCHSCHULE PFORZHEIM • DEUTSCHE INSTITUTE FUR TEXTIL- UND FASERFORSCHUNG DENKENDORF • ALKE SRL • ETHNICON METSOVION POLYTECHNION • SUEZ RV FRANCE • BCIRCULAR COMPOSITES SOCIEDAD LIMITADA • COMPOSITE PATCH • TPI-KOMPOZIT KANAT SANAYI VE TICARET ANONIM SIRKETI • CIAOTECH Srl • ASOCIACION AEMAC