IEA Task 45 phase 2 - Recycling of wind turbine blades
The purpose of Task 45 Phase 2 is to establish best practices for the recycling of decommissioned blades, define standards for end-of-life blade management, provide guidance on scaling up recycling processes, and support the establishment of recycling value chains.
Sustainable management of EoL wind turbine blades in Sweden.
Wind turbine blades are manufactured as a complex multi-material structure that is dominated by glass fibre reinforced polymers (GFRP). Carbon fibres are also increasingly used in combination with glass fibres as blades are getting longer. GFRP are difficult to recycle to a high value product that can compete with new glass fibres and matrix materials. This is one of the main reasons why there is a lack of GFRP waste management higher up in the waste hierarchy today.
In Sweden, the volume of decommissioned wind turbine blades has been estimated in recent research projects at RISE. It is strongly related to the plan for higher electrification of the country but also to the lifespan of the turbines, which is normally set to 20 years (longer average lifespan -29 years- has however been recently reported). Keeping the technical lifespan of 20 years for our estimations, the following volumes have been obtained:
2024 – 2029: 2 000 tonnes/year
2030 – 2039: increase is expected to 8 000 tonnes/year
2040 – 2070: increasing again to 15 000 – 30 000 tonnes/year
Today, we can see that there is an urgent need to increase the availability of information on current and future volumes of decommissioned wind turbine blades to drive the development towards the repurpose and recycling of wind turbine blades for initiatives higher up in the waste hierarchy. There is also a need to proactively provide information related to the dismantling of wind turbines to enable the emergence of new value chains (information about wind turbine blades, damages, material data, geolocation, dismantling dates, quantities, ownership, transportation, ...).
Among the technically feasible solutions for recycling wind turbine blades that can be considered, it is more likely that technically simpler and less expensive solutions will be established earlier. Today, several solutions are explored in parallel, some already implemented at market level: co-incineration in the cement industry, reuse/mechanical recycling, thermochemical recycling with pyrolysis/solvolysis.
Different solutions for the circular management of wind turbine blades are being developed in Europe. Smaller actors and research/industry projects are often found in countries that have implemented direct policy instruments or have wind turbine blade manufacturers.
Transnational collaborative initiative such as the IEA Wind TCP task 45 “Recycling of wind turbine blades” (in which Sweden is represented) are actively working to establish best practices. For long-term solutions, the establishment of circular business models involving all stakeholders in a value chain is required.