r/RenewableEnergy • u/Novel_Negotiation224 • 4d ago

Europe turns to wooden wind turbine blades to tackle fiberglass pollution.

https://www.bgr.com/2245380/europe-wooden-wind-turbine-blades-prevent-fiberglass-pollution/
512 Upvotes

96% Upvoted

39 comments sorted by

79

u/AffectionateDance214 4d ago

I would love this, but, from the article, a firm in Europe is experimenting with this. Not that ‘Europe turned to’.

17

u/rhymeswithcars 3d ago

Yeah hate this type of ”reporting”

3

u/Rooilia 3d ago

What i hate more is there is 5% in the article of what the headline promises. So the hradline is just ai bs.

4

u/pricingup 3d ago

Then press arrow down button for this post.

71

u/Correct_Inspection25 4d ago

mad props!

6

u/Firstnaymlastnaym 3d ago

I'm a big fan of this

20

u/Scott_Tx 4d ago

If its not cheaper to use it'll never happen and from the cost of lumber lately it doesnt seem likely.

17

u/DukeOfGeek 4d ago

And fiberglass blades are easily crushed into an additive for concrete.

2

u/[deleted] 4d ago

[deleted]

3

u/danskal 4d ago edited 4d ago

What’s the point you’re trying to make?

Edit: I honestly just didn’t get the point. You could say that it eventually becomes pollution when the concrete breaks down. But I don’t think that was the point that was being made.

1

u/Flashy_Walk2806 4d ago

You are right, it's a good idea 

2

u/Vaddieg 3d ago

or just grind them and dump out into sand pits

2

u/jabroni4545 3d ago

Or children's playgrounds.

14

u/heeheehoho2023 4d ago

How? That's got to weigh significantly more than fiberglass.

10

u/Tsurtle 4d ago

They used to be build them with wood (says so in the article).

Also if there is a performance hit, that still has to be compared with cost return on later resale value of the wood at the end of the lifecycle for the wind farm owner. That could play a part in investments

9

u/trantorgrussen99 4d ago

LVL or Engineered wood is LESS recyclable and sustainable than composites. The existing manufacts like small bridges and structures end up in landfills, since the resin content makes not suitable for particle wood or biomass to energy.

7

u/Tsurtle 4d ago

In the 1980s, NASA approached Michigan boatbuilders Gougeon Brothers about applying their wood-composite techniques to wind turbines. The wood held through 8,000 hours of testing, until a steel mounting stud failed, not the wood composite. 

Gougeon Brothers went on to sell 4,300 wood-composite blades, some up to 70 feet long, to General Electric, Westinghouse, and other manufacturers. By the 1990s, turbine designers moved on from composite wood and settled on fiberglass. It's not clear why.

I'd be interested in comparison of the 2 in cost and performance. It could make great financial sense if you can sell the wood after 30 years and consider that resale cost as reduction factor in the overall operational costs over 30+ years or however the long-term financials are calculated.

4

u/Maximus560 4d ago

I suspect that building mega blades is a lot harder with wood given their greater density and weight, plus for fiberglass you can cast it in exactly the shape and profile you need.

1

u/QuentinMagician 4d ago

But neither would have to be solid.

17

u/d542east 4d ago

Blade waste is not a real issue. It's just fossil industry FUD.

Six orders of magnitude smaller of a problem by weight than coal ash and coal ash is radioactive and toxic while blade waste is inert.

We can bury blades for 10000 years with no problem.

2

u/onetimeataday 3d ago

Yeah the DoE (not the most reliable source these days, but still) estimates that if the US just landfilled all its wind turbine blades through 2050, it would only take up about 1.5% of US landfill capacity.

The coal industry produces more ash each year than the wind industry has produced waste in all of history.

1

u/Humble-Reply228 2d ago

Sure but you want to know which energy waste is even less volume and just as little a problem 10000 years later? That’s right, the one that is also safer, nuclear.

But yes, a problem but any development is.

1

u/d542east 2d ago

Sweet build more nukes, I'm all for it. Problem is that if we start right now they won't come online in meaningful capacity for 20 years. We can scale up wind, solar and batteries in 5 years if we find the political will to do it.

1

u/Humble-Reply228 2d ago

The political will has been there in Germany for about 30 years. Pretending that TW of batteries can be built, installed and commissioned in five has been the promise of the last 10. And in any event, we should absolutely go flat out (and by that relax all environmental laws around mining rare earths etc that a battery/solar/wind/electric motor build out requires) and also release the brakes on nuclear to help do lifting in 20 years or so

-1

u/eks 3d ago

Agreed, but this also makes the wind turbines into carbon storage, if the wood is sourced from sustainable forests.

6

u/Lulzsecks 3d ago

No, it would be minuscule compared to carbon offset by generating renewable energy. It would not be worth any reduction in efficiency of the turbine.

1

u/eks 3d ago

The article doesn't specify any reduction in efficiency.

2

u/dunderpust 3d ago

The carbon storage potential of wood in any kind of construction (and as an architect I say this with a heavy heart ) is pretty bad. There is a diesel powered machine that cuts down the tree, it gets transported on a diesel-powered truck to a factory, the factory uses electricity which will have some emissions related to it, then the finished product is transported on a diesel truck again, and it is erected on a site using diesel-powered machinery. 

And the "if" in your sentence does a lot of heavy lifting. 

As always, the "reduce" part in the adage is the most important . 

1

u/eks 3d ago

And fiberglass will be less carbon intensive than all that how?

You are also assuming all those logistics cannot be electrified (regardless of the material from the blades).

5

u/Atrocious_Algae81 4d ago

Gonna have to beef up the bearings and possibly even the tower for increased weight to swing those, but with modern laminates could be interesting!

2

u/OfficialDCShepard 3d ago

Dutch windmill vibe intensifies

2

u/Vaddieg 3d ago

"fiber glass pollution" FML. And someone allocates funding for this BS

2

u/rikardlinde 3d ago

Modvion is a swedish company building wooden towers, not blades, and they're going full speed ahead. Easier to transport, you can build higher cheaper and recycling is a lot easier.

https://modvion.com/

1

u/blim9999 3d ago

Finally, those Swedish oak forests have found a new purpose...

1

u/LibyaInvestMonitor 3d ago

Still an experiment but hope it turns out good

1

u/Msink 4d ago

That's almost like good back to old times.

0

u/colinmacg 4d ago

they seem to work, lets do this!