Althouse: "At the end of their life span of around 20 years, [wind turbine blades] are chopped into pieces and buried in a handful of landfills... wind turbine graveyards...."

August 30, 2024

"At the end of their life span of around 20 years, [wind turbine blades] are chopped into pieces and buried in a handful of landfills... wind turbine graveyards...."

"Researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory have developed what they say is a turbine blade made from plant material that can be recycled. The new substance is made from inedible sugar extracted from wood, plant remains, used cooking oil and agricultural waste.... Recycling a turbine blade made from traditional materials is nearly impossible because it is very difficult to break its strong chemical bonds.... But the new material... can be recycled by dumping it into a bath of methanol heated up to around 440 degrees Fahrenheit, which turns it into an elastic liquid that can be molded into a new shape.... 'It’s heat plus solvent.... That will break it apart.'..."

From "Turbine Blades Have Piled Up in Landfills. A Solution May Be Coming. Wind power has a waste problem that has been difficult to solve. Turbine blades made from a new plant-based material could make them recyclable" (NYT).

68 comments:

Ralph L said...: Methanol vaporizes before water, so 440 deg means significant pressure is involved. Now they need a blade that won't kill birds.; 8/30/24, 4:20 PM
MadTownGuy said...: Flash point is around 10° C, or ~50° F. "Autoignition temp is (gulp) 440° C, or 824° F.

How do you dip anything in that soup without it exploding?; 8/30/24, 4:22 PM
Leland said...: Could make them more recyclable. Could make them more susceptible to fatigue cracks and catastrophic failure. One reason the old blades were made of material with strong chemical bonds is to make them more resilient to forces placed on them.
BTW, how much energy is needed to heat a vat of methanol to 440F and maintain the temperature and pressure (methanol boils at 65F, so I guess this is a "steam" bath or high levels of pressure) while the 100m plus long blade dissolves? Asking so we can discover how many wind turbines it will take to produce that energy.; 8/30/24, 4:24 PM
MadTownGuy said...: How much energy is expended in the recycling process? Maybe they could build a solar tower like the ones at the CA/NV line to make he heat...; 8/30/24, 4:25 PM
MadTownGuy said...: They could even mow down a Joshua Tree forest to build the solar collector.; 8/30/24, 4:43 PM
RideSpaceMountain said...: "But the new material... can be recycled by dumping it into a bath of methanol heated up to around 440 degrees Fahrenheit, which turns it into an elastic liquid that can be molded into a new shape.... 'It’s heat plus solvent.... That will break it apart.'..."

Have you heard about this new ship called the Titanic? It's got a bunch of doors and crap and stuff. Latest technology. It's unsinkable! And, if it does sink, it will safely oxidate itself away at the bottom of the ocean for thousands of years. Out of sight, out of mind. Problem solved!; 8/30/24, 4:44 PM
RideSpaceMountain said...: I await the revelation that Boeing is involved somehow. I'm offering odds. Place your bets.; 8/30/24, 4:49 PM
BUMBLE BEE said...: I read this earlier today;;;
"We used to kill whales for oil, now we kill whales for wind."; 8/30/24, 4:52 PM
Skeptical Voter said...: Next thing you know we're going to hear about cold fusion. Pressure and heat and volatile flammable liquids are just great--so long as you keep it all inside the pressure vessel. But it's nasty when they get loose (I'm an old petroleum refinery lawyer).; 8/30/24, 4:53 PM
tcrosse said...: That something is idiot proof presupposes a finite supply of idiots.; 8/30/24, 4:54 PM
Leland said...: One partial truth is the notion that current wind turbine blades are chopped up and buried in landfills. They are in landfills, but the chopped up? Not so much:
https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/sweetwater-wind-turbine-blades-dump/
https://www.startribune.com/seriously-this-sucks-how-a-small-minnesota-town-was-left-with-a-giant-pile-of-wind-turbine-blades/600981294; 8/30/24, 5:00 PM
Kalli Davis said...: The solution is nuclear energy.; 8/30/24, 5:07 PM
Gospace said...: Just want to mention I'm currently operating 58 year old water tube boilers. They're being replaced because the bureaucracy says they can only last 40 years- and a few years back they discovered ours were >50 years old... Except for the asbestos still on them in places, everything will be easily recycled. Using less energy then used to refine the ores that the metal came from initially. The cast iron boiler in my basement about equally old. Says "Made in West Germany" on the nameplate.

Dams, such as the Hoover Dam, should be built to last forever. Anything else that produces electrical power should have a half century or longer projected lifetime. The need for power is going to be there as long as humans are around.

Total lifetime energy costs of building and maintaining huge wind turbines are less then the total power output that will ever be achieved from the wind turbine.; 8/30/24, 5:12 PM
gspencer said...: "Recycling a turbine blade made from traditional materials is nearly impossible because it is very difficult to break its strong chemical bonds."

Although the ever-so-typical coastal winds seem to be able to break them without much problem.; 8/30/24, 5:17 PM
Bruce Hayden said...: NREL is kinda good for something. Grew up on the other side of the Mesa from their HQ in Golden, and occasionally rode our horses over where they are now.; 8/30/24, 5:17 PM
Rabel said...: The blades range from 100 feet to 300 feet long each and sweep an area of from one to two acres. The forces they must resist in operation are rather large.

Build them out of compost. OK.; 8/30/24, 5:20 PM
Randomizer said...: How much money and effort has to go into these stupid ideas until we figure out they are untenable, and move on? The answer is going to be nuclear power, so let's just get on with it. Wind and solar are niche markets.; 8/30/24, 5:22 PM
Lawrence Person said...: I think we should haul used wind turbine blades down to the border to build the wall.; 8/30/24, 5:46 PM
Aggie said...: You have to support innovation if you ever want to see change for the better. Sometimes, this means experimenting with changes for the worse.

Nuclear power plants are the answer, I think.; 8/30/24, 5:56 PM
Jersey Fled said...: “ The new substance is made from inedible sugar extracted from wood, plant remains, used cooking oil and agricultural waste....”

As an engineer, I call bullsh*t. The forces on those blades are enormous, which is why they keep breaking. No way a blade made of that combination of stuff would last a week.; 8/30/24, 6:06 PM
Greg The Class Traitor said...: I'll bet $10 that these plant material wind turbine blades are a lot weaker than the metal ones, and last a lot less time

Hey, more waste? No problem!; 8/30/24, 6:10 PM
lgv said...: What is the useful life of these blades? Probably not 20 years. The 20 is also nonsense and doesn’t include those in the ocean. What do they cost? Must be more since they don’t mention it. Of course these idiots don’t care about the cost because they don’t care about the impact of energy cost on our standard of living.; 8/30/24, 6:13 PM
lgv said...: What is the useful life of these blades? Probably not 20 years. The 20 is also nonsense and doesn’t include those in the ocean. What do they cost? Must be more since they don’t mention it. Of course these idiots don’t care about the cost because they don’t care about the impact of energy cost on our standard of living.; 8/30/24, 6:13 PM
William50 said...: I would like to know what fossil fuel is used to heat the methanol to 440 F; 8/30/24, 6:13 PM
Jersey Fled said...: Further, if you go to the NREL website you find the claim that they are a “national laboratory of the Department of Energy”. But if you go to the Department of Energy Website they are not listed.; 8/30/24, 6:20 PM
n.n said...: A waste problem above and below ground. A lifetime of intermittent, unreliable, expensive energy. An avian Cuisinart, too. A low density Green blight upon land and sea.; 8/30/24, 6:21 PM
gilbar said...: Clearly, the PROBLEM IS: CO2
And, The ANSWER IS: we NEED to eliminate ALL LIFE ON EARTH.
Once we have eliminated ALL LIFE ON EARTH.. The environment will stabilize..
Well, it won't Really STABILIZE, because it won't Really be an "environment" any more..
But! and climatic changes will no longer be OUR FAULT.

I KNOW, that this plan, for Global Suicide might sound "extreme" and SOME people might even say it would be "Global Suicide".. But THAT it just deniers saying CRAZY things to try and scare people..
ALL THAT IT WOULD BE, is global suicide.. SEE?? a minor event, that will solve ALL of our problems!; 8/30/24, 6:38 PM
Peachy said...: why are they piling up in landfills?; 8/30/24, 6:42 PM
Fred Drinkwater said...: I agree. The load margins with existing designs and materials are clearly not huge, given the current failure rate. I'm not seeing anything in the proposed material suite with anything like the necessary tensile strength.; 8/30/24, 6:44 PM
PB said...: Unfortunately, it's not just the blades that have 20 year lifespans. Much of the rest of the turbine does too. Then there's the hundreds of yards of reinforced concrete. Then there is the battery back-up system, if you don't want natural gas peaker plants. Those batteries don't last long and have recycling problems as well. All in all, it's not a cost-effective way to produce electricity.; 8/30/24, 6:50 PM
Mason G said...: "All in all, it's not a cost-effective way to produce electricity."

The goal isn't to produce energy. Whatever happens to be generated might be used but the actual purpose of these projects is to move money from the wallets of some people into the wallets of others.; 8/30/24, 7:01 PM
Mason G said...: Produce electricity, not energy. D'oh!; 8/30/24, 7:01 PM
tcrosse said...: The whole point of the exercise is to extract energy from the climate system, turn it into electricity and ship it elsewhere, where much of it is turned into heat. This assumes that the climate is infinite, but the whole global warming scam tells us that it isn't. In fact it tells us that the climate is a delicate thing, easily upset by things like plastic drinking straws and SUVs. So we should lighten up on the windmills.; 8/30/24, 7:03 PM
Aught Severn said...: We just need to move all the nasty pollution stuff outside the environment: https://youtu.be/3m5qxZm_JqM?feature=shared; 8/30/24, 7:09 PM
Goldenpause said...: The grift becomes more complicated. But fear not. There is so much money to be made that the grifters will find a way to game the system yet again.; 8/30/24, 7:25 PM
Goldenpause said...: The grift becomes more complicated. But fear not. There is so much money to be made that the grifters will find a way to game the system yet again.; 8/30/24, 7:25 PM
Josephbleau said...: Turbine blades are tricky because when they are above the hub they are in compression but when below the hub they are in tension, so you are fighting between buckling and tension fracture, they need to be tough.

I don't know why you can't just crush them and use them as aggregate in concrete. Probably because they are so tough its expensive to crush them into 1 inch cubes rather than bury them whole, so wrap them in primacord and blast them to pieces. Well, pay the piper and do it. Or make cool sweepy coffee tables out of them.

Its only fabulous amounts of money, its for the children that we don't have. So buck up for the windmills people.; 8/30/24, 7:32 PM
Michael K said...: Hilarious. The greenies are too stupid to appreciate advice.; 8/30/24, 7:39 PM
ColoComment said...: This is a Sep 2021 press release that explains (to a limited extent) the relationship between NREL, the NREL Foundation, and the DOE.
https://www.nrel.gov/news/press/2021/nrel-launches-nonprofit-foundation-to-fund-research-scholarships.html

Last paras.:
"The foundation was established as an independent legal entity separate from the laboratory to avoid conflicts of interest. Three other national laboratories within the Department of Energy system have established foundations. These foundations have increased access to private sector, philanthropic funding and seek flexibility to conduct mission-related programs using new mechanisms.
....
NREL is the U.S. Department of Energy's primary national laboratory for renewable energy and energy efficiency research and development. NREL is operated for the Energy Department by the Alliance for Sustainable Energy LLC."; 8/30/24, 7:56 PM
ColoComment said...: Alliance for Sustainable Energy LLC is a Delaware limited liabiliity company formed in Feb 2008, and authorized to do business in Colorado in July of that same year.; 8/30/24, 8:03 PM
Static Ping said...: I have been told - I have not confirmed this, but I have heard it multiple times - that at least some of the early wind turbines were technically generating negative power. The amount of electricity they generated during they deployment was less than the energy required to make them. In theory, such a thing might be useful for some purposes, but not for energy generation on a standard power grid.

In any case, there are a couple of problems with this "solution." The first has been a recurring problem: solutions that work well in the small scale can backfire on the large scale. For instance, using corn for ethanol seemed like a good way to use excess corn. The result was jacking up the price of corn as ethanol ate more and more of the corn supply, leaving less of it to eat and not really making life better for anyone, other than the farmers with the higher prices. The second is the still fundamental problem that wind power is an awful way to generate power for a power grid that requires a steady power supply to function. Wind, by itself, literally cannot run a power grid. There will be days when it produces exactly nothing, and if you have nothing but wind power then the grid collapses. You need fossil fuels, nuclear, hydropower, or at least something that can produce reliable power on demand, and that is going to have to be the majority of your power generation. Wind just becomes a gimmick that is sometimes useful, but you have to plan your power grid upon what you estimate wind is going to give you which really does not make it worth it. The fact that you can now recycle the things does not change the fact that they are practically useless.; 8/30/24, 8:25 PM
RJ said...: Sweetwater, Texas has a huge number of dead windmill blades piled on land around the town. A company was paid to recycle them, and keeps promising to do so, but it never seems to happen. Unless things have changed since I read about it, the only disposal is a Wyoming landfill that buried blades that have been cut into sections. Power from wind is not really possible, but we are demonstrating our ability to pretend that it is feasible.; 8/30/24, 8:44 PM
Mason G said...: "Wind just becomes a gimmick that is sometimes useful, but you have to plan your power grid upon what you estimate wind is going to give you which really does not make it worth it."

If there are times when you get no power from wind because the wind is not blowing and you still want to keep the lights on, you need a reliable source of power for 100% of the demand. If you have a reliable source of power for 100% of the demand as a backup, why not just use that instead, and scrap intermittent (and unreliable) wind?; 8/30/24, 9:16 PM
Assistant Village Idiot said...: Oh, I thought it was nuclear waste that was hard to deal with afterwards. Never mind.; 8/30/24, 10:00 PM
Gospace said...: Only when the blades are stationary... When they're moving at speed- overall, every blade is in tension as they try to fly off the hub. But it's a little more difficult then that. When the wind is blowing, the front of the blades are in tension, the back compression. nd if the wind is absolutely constant (never true for any measurable period of time) the blades flex every time they pass in front of the support tower. Not as bad as they would if they were downwind turbines- which is why they aren't... Since the wind is constantly changing speed, the blades are constantly flexing. Constantly. It's the flexing that kills the blades. Flex any material constantly a few thousand times and you're going to find the weak points. And not only is it constantly flexing, but the amount of the flex is constantly changing.

Yeah, a large turbine blade leads a very stressful life. And it's much harder for non-destructive testing to find weak spots in composite materials then it is in solids like metals.; 8/30/24, 10:28 PM
John henry said...: A 2mw windmill has about a 300' diameter. It turns 10 to 20 rpm depending on wind speed.

Back of the envelope calculation gives me a tip velocity between 100 miles per hour at 10rpm and 200 mph at 20rpm.

That is Hella fast. It puts one hell of a set of stresses on the blades

John Henry; 8/31/24, 12:20 AM
John henry said...: A 2mw windmill has about a 300' diameter. It turns 10 to 20 rpm depending on wind speed.

Back of the envelope calculation gives me a tip velocity between 100 miles per hour at 10rpm and 200 mph at 20rpm.

That is Hella fast. It puts one hell of a set of stresses on the blades

John Henry; 8/31/24, 12:20 AM
John henry said...: It ain't cheap. New York just agreed to pay something like $130/mwh for windmil electricity. It currently pays about $35 for fossil generated juice.

John Henry; 8/31/24, 12:23 AM
gadfly said...: Wind farms became a thing in the early '70s in California that are tiny by today's standards and far too small to reuse. Original builders are out of business and these useless and ugly towers still stand as a reminder that state laws do not cover all aspects of removal after 20 years. Today's towers are now monstrous, rising 285 feet with blades taking the total height up some 410 feet in the air and there are three blades per tower. Support towers cannot be plastic and wind turbine farms are using far more land . So if there are 100 towers per wind farm, who pays for removal of all that ugliness? If we add back all these future costs to wind turbines, the investment is far, far more than building electric generator stacks that clean the air before releasing coal smoke back to the atmosphere. And Wyoming's huge Powder River coal surface mines are the cheapest form of energy in the world. And of course we all know what happens when the wind doesn't blow or even blows more than our immediate need for electricity in the grid.; 8/31/24, 1:52 AM
Ralph L said...: You also need electricity and a motor to keep the windmill turning when the wind isn't blowing. Otherwise, the bearings are ruined by the stationary weight.; 8/31/24, 2:08 AM
Lucien said...: Now do billions of solar panels in need of disposal — while still complaining that nuclear plants create too much waste.; 8/31/24, 6:39 AM
JAORE said...: Sadly feelz appears to be far stronger than reality for the "Party of Science".; 8/31/24, 7:20 AM
JAORE said...: But, but, but.. the Democrats are the "party of science". Haven't you heard? Are there ANY net positives about turbines or solar? Except keeping the feeding trough full.; 8/31/24, 7:47 AM
Scott Patton said...: Ding, Ding, Ding! - Mason G FTW. "purpose of these projects is to move money from the wallets of some people into the wallets of others". Rackets are eternal.; 8/31/24, 7:50 AM
Curious George said...: They're not made from metal. Fiberglass or carbon fiber, or a composite.; 8/31/24, 8:06 AM
Rusty said...: Mason G. The goal is to produce subsidies.; 8/31/24, 8:34 AM
Rusty said...: All the nuclear waste produced by commercial nuclear power plants is stored-wait for it- at those nuclears power plants. With room to spare.; 8/31/24, 8:39 AM
Rusty said...: Organic wind turbine blades, huh? Let's file this one under, nearly a good idea.; 8/31/24, 8:43 AM
Curious George said...: This mess was created by the same assholes you shill for here everyday.; 8/31/24, 8:53 AM
Deep State Reformer said...: Dump that shit on the lawn of Al Gore's estate. "Social justice" and that, right?; 8/31/24, 10:17 AM
gadfly said...: Those who support a convicted felon for president are doing the shilling here. You are indeed curiously inept. Stay on topic please.; 8/31/24, 10:22 AM
MadTownGuy said...: Felony indictments filed by a prosecutor who was smacked down in another case for overreach (the NYC store owner who defended herself from a violent attacker), created from nothing by a partisan judge, based on paperwork misdemeanors past their expiry date, adjudicated by allowing testimony from an actual convicted felon who advised the defendant to take the action on which the charges are based, while disallowing the defense's expert witnesses, using jury instructions that go against all legal precedent and are most likely unconstitutional, don't count.

Compare to the felon still (nominally in the role of President), who was deemed by the prosecutor to be incompetent to stand trial, yet is still holding office.

I make no apology for the run-on sentences. All the information contained in them is pertinent.; 8/31/24, 10:43 AM
Jupiter said...: "Dams, such as the Hoover Dam, should be built to last forever." Well, except, they silt up.; 8/31/24, 10:50 AM
Thomas said...: Hmm... the current composite blades were supposed to be recyclable. There were several companies that contracted for the recycling project. My understanding is that no significant progress has been made for all of the money invested. Perhaps the money transfer was the main point.; 8/31/24, 11:04 AM
Josephbleau said...: I don’t feel like doing the arithmetic now but at about 25 rpm i doubt there is a 1 g acceleration on the blades, since i wont do the calc i really dont know.; 8/31/24, 2:28 PM
typingtalker said...: But the new material... can be recycled by dumping it into a bath of methanol heated up to around 440 degrees Fahrenheit ...

Simple enough until you realize that the boiling point of methanol is 148.5 degrees F.

Wikipedia; 8/31/24, 2:36 PM
typingtalker said...: Avon business creating furniture out of retired wind turbine blades
News 5 Cleveland; 8/31/24, 2:42 PM
Josephbleau said...: Ok since I am lazy I looked up the paper ”Calculating wind turbine component loads for improved life.” The Coriolis loading is small but the centrifugal loading on a blade is very high, 40 m per sec sq. So the blades are in tension at all angles when the thing is rotating at normal speed. There are lots of crazy loads like wind shear, flexure, and other complications so the design seems analytically impossibly complex. Good paper though.; 8/31/24, 3:13 PM