It produces 12MW – four times the amount he imagined 20 years ago.
Mr Schellings recently led the development team for GE’s Haliade-X, now the world’s largest wind turbine. “We couldn’t picture anything much more powerful than a three megawatt (MW) output, but even that seemed a challenge,” he says. “Twenty years ago, my colleagues and I used to ask ourselves what is the most powerful offshore wind turbine that we could imagine,” says Vincent Schellings, who works for General Electric in the Dutch city of Enschede.
Meanwhile new rotors are only getting bigger. The Dutch city boasts a 1,200sq m children’s playground called Wikado, with a slide tower, tunnels, ramps, and slides all made from five discarded wind turbine blades.ĭecommissioned blades have also been turned into another playground and outdoor seats in the Dutch city of Terneuzen, two bus stops in Almere, a seat beside Rotterdam’s famous Erasmusbrug bridge.Ĭésare Peeren, an architect from Rotterdam’s Superuse Studios is currently waiting for planning permission to turn two 55m blades into a bridge in Denmark’s city of Ålborg, he says. In Rotterdam unwanted blades have been put to a different use. Germany’s subsidiary of the French recycling group Veolia is researching the technology. It has mainly been done at a laboratory scale. The problem is significant amounts of energy are needed to activate the pyrolysis, which might limit its environmental usefulness. And char (charcoal) which can be used as a fertiliser. Other products include syngas (synthesis gas) that can be used in combustion engines. The process recovers fibres other industries can reuse for glues, paints, and concrete. If we “holistically think about the end of life, there are simple choices we could make now that could make fibreglass in the blade easier to recycle,” says Richard Cochrane, professor of renewable energy at Exeter University.Ī second avenue for recycling turbine blades is called pyrolysis.Īfter first chopping up the blades, pyrolysis breaks up the composite fibres in ovens with an inert atmosphere, at about 450-700C. He’s also developed a programme to track blades throughout their life cycle, and make it easier to recycle them at the end. Mr Lilly has received interest from “several manufacturers” for his pellets. The pellets can then be turned into injectable plastics, or highly waterproof boards that can be used in construction, he says. Mr Lilly has been transforming fibreglass composites into small pellets he calls EcoPoly. That doesn’t mean they have to go into landfill, according to Don Lilly, chief executive of Global Fiberglass Solutions in Bellevue, Washington. Such composite materials might be light and strong, but they are also extremely hard to recycle. Instead of using cloth to catch the wind like Prof Blyth and the ancient Iranians, today’s turbine blades are built from composite materials – older blades from glass fibre, newer ones from carbon fibre. His second powered the Lunatic Asylum, Infirmary and Dispensary in Montrose (later Sunnyside Royal Hospital). Scottish professor James Blyth built the first windmill to make electricity in 1887, powering his holiday home in Marykirk. Wind power goes as far back at least as 9th Century BC Persia, where sails were used to grind grain and draw up water on the windy Sistan plains. And disposing of them in an environmentally-friendly way is a growing problem.īurying them doesn’t sound very green. About two gigawatts worth of turbines will be refitted in 20. Turbines from the first great 1990s wave of wind power are reaching the end of their life expectancy today. Each is about 90m (300ft) long, and will be cut into three, then the pieces will be stacked and buried. These blades, which have reached the end of their 25-year working lives, come from three wind farms in the north-western US state. Turbines from the 1990s are reaching the end of their working lives
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