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With a plane they can fly out the waste blades currently accumulating on wind farms and dump them in the ocean.
by CodeWriter23 2y ago
With a plane they can fly out the waste blades currently accumulating on wind farms and dump them in the ocean.
- testfoobar 2y agoWhy are there waste blades - this isn't the razor-and-blade model for wind energy is it?
- CodeWriter23 2y agoI don’t know the reasons, perhaps stress or replacement cycles. What I can tell you, if you look closely when driving by the big wind farm near Desert Hot Springs, they have blades in many places on the ground. Have a look for yourself, pan around a bit... https://www.google.com/maps/place/Cabazon,+CA+92230/@33.9100776,-116.5676197,249m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m6!3m5!1s0x80db3f7240a30933:0xd5842863d635b000!8m2!3d33.9167448!4d-116.7829262!16zL20vMHIzZ2Y?entry=ttu https://www.google.com/maps/place/Cabazon,+CA+92230/@33.9100...
- alexvoda 2y agoThe blades get worn in time (decades) due to multiple factors like: mechanical fatigue, erosion, UV, evolution of technology, etc. They can not be refurbished or recycled into new blades but they can be repurposed to produce street furniture, reinforced plastic pellets or even as a concrete ingredient. So far there is not enough of an economic incentive to find uses for the quantity of blades being discarded instead of just dumping them. There are however companies and research projects working on making blades more recyclable and sustainable. I also don't think dumping them is a huge issue. They do not leach toxic chemicals, do not produce microplastics, do not decompose into greenhouse gases. They are just a very voluminous waste product. In the transition towards a sustainable future I believe wind turbine blades are a really cheap technical debt to acquire.