Thanks to Liam Gulliver from Euro News for the Headline
What happens to wind turbine blades when they die after their 20 years of life?
Well they are pretty hard to destroy and up to now have been causing the “Wind Energy believers” much trauma as the only option to destroy the hard wearing materials was to send them to landfill. However no more.
Enter “flash joule heating”. By subjecting the hard to recycle wind turbine blades to a ” brief burst of intense heat”. The heat can transform blades from silica containing fibre glass and carbon-rich polymer resin- into silicon carbide and graphéne, two valuable manufacturing materials.
The research that was completed in China found that the resulting materials from the “flash joule heating” can be incorporated into basically an upcycled and better performing wind turbine blade.
What is there not to like, except for the energy required to heat something to 2000°C in seconds has to come from somewhere, probably not wind power and what happens to this better , stronger material when it comes to the end of it’s life. Can the same process happen again?
Namaste and Thank You for Reading.🙏
