The Coming Tide of Wind Turbine Blades Retirement: Threats and Treatment Measures

Abstract

Wind energy is a kind of clean energy widely used all over the world. Since the 10th of this century, the world has been facing the environmental problem of a large amount of waste produced by retired wind turbines. The blades are difficult to be recycled because of their high strength, corrosion resistance and special materials. The scrapping of wind turbines brings challenges to the sustainable utilization of wind energy. This paper studies the problems brought by the previous methods of treating waste wind turbine blades, including the impact on the surrounding soil and water environment, the emission of air pollutants and greenhouse gases, and the harm to animals, plants and microorganisms in the environment. This paper also introduces the current feasible recovery processes: the mechanical recovery process is relatively simple and has low energy consumption, but the application of the recovered materials is narrow; Thermal recovery can produce widely used products and its by-products have additional value, but the energy consumption is high; Chemical treatment can obtain high-quality recycled products, but the high cost and slow reaction speed make it difficult to deal with a large number of waste blades. The biological treatment methods which has certain application prospect are expected. At the same time, from the perspective of waste generation, this paper studied the recyclable blade materials that includes thermoplastic resin and biomass composites, which provides a feasible way to completely solve the problem of waste wind power blades in the future.