Posters

Abstract

The EU is facing a significant restructuring of Renewable Energy Sources (RES) to achieve climate neutrality goals by 2050. In this conversion phase, wind energy is one popular RES and this is seen in the expected expansion from 200 GW to 2,300 GW in the next 30 years [1]. This will be achieved mainly by replacing existing rotor blades by larger and more resistant blade structures, which will increase unitary wind turbine capacity from 5-10 MW to over 25 MW. To add to the carbon neutrality goal, the current geopolitical instability came to accelerate this transition from fossil fuels to wind energy. All these new developments come with major challenges for the industry regarding affordability, security, sustainability, and efficiency - namely when it comes to deal with end-of-life windmill blade “waste”. Therefore, the consortium BLADES2BUILD will propose a three-tier circular solution: * Recover and recycle the blade and glass fibre textiles scraps from the wind blade manufacturing in cement/clinker co-processing as an alternative fuel (R8/R9). * Re-purpose of individual materials constituents of the blades in construction products, like concrete and asphalt mixtures (R7) * Repair (R4) EOL wind blades with minimal refurbishment or processing for re-use (R3) The circular solutions will be explored at a first instance in a lab scale so that, at a later stage, we build a demonstration plant that will manage the EoL blades into one of the 3 circular options of the blade. Technologies to perform qualitative screening of the blades will be investigated as well.