Wind turbines convert wind into electricity and have become an indispensable part of environmentally friendly power generation in Germany. There are around 30,000 wind turbines in Germany, but they have to be dismantled after about twenty years and replaced with new ones. Some components of the wind turbines, such as the steel and concrete used, are already recycled in an environmentally friendly disposal process. But the long rotor blades, which are made of glass-fiber-reinforced plastic (GRP) and basal wood, could not be further processed until now.
Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Chemical Technology (ICT) have now developed a new recycling technique that will enable the basal wood to be separated from the rotor blades in the future and processed into insulation materials, for example. The newly obtained wood-fiber insulation mats can then be used for insulating walls and roofs in the real estate sector, similar to Styrofoam. For this purpose, the rotor blades are first divided directly at the site with a water jet lance and then with the help of a mobile shredding machine into small pieces of about 20-25 cm in diameter.
The pieces are then broken down into their individual components for further processing in a so-called impact mill by hurling the pieces against a metal surface at a high speed, causing the basal wood to separate from the very hard plastic. Further processing of the recycled basal wood into a new elastic wood foam is also possible. The newly created wood foam can also be further processed and used for insulation or as an environmentally friendly packaging material.
Source: WKI
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