Vestas-led Coalition to Commercialise Soln for Fully Recyclable Wind Turbine Blades

A coalition of industry and academic leaders led by Vestas has developed a new technology to enable circularity for material used to make wind turbine blades - thermoset composites.

The new technology delivers the final technological step on the journey towards a fully recyclable wind turbine value chain.

To enable the adoption of this new technology, and to advance a circular economy across the wind industry, a new initiative entitled CETEC (Circular Economy for Thermosets Epoxy Composites) has been established. It was partly funded by Innovation Fund Denmark (IFD) and involves leaders including Olin, Danish Technological Institute (DTI), and Aarhus University.

Within 3 years, CETEC has been aiming to present a fully scoped solution ready for industrial adoption, based on commercialisation of the novel circularity technology.

Although, wind turbines are 85-90 percent recyclable, with turbine blade material constituting the remaining percentage that cannot be recycled, due to the nature of thermoset composites. Now, CETEC aimed to close this recycling gap via the new technology.

Commenting on the matter, Allan Korsgaard Poulsen, Head of Sustainability and Advanced Materials, Vestas Innovation and Concepts, said “as global commitments to a net-zero future increase, it’s absolutely crucial to ensure the wind industry can scale sustainably, which includes Vestas fulfilling our ambition to produce zero-waste turbines by 2040. Leveraging this new technological breakthrough in chemcycling epoxy resin, the CETEC project will be a significant milestone in Vestas’ journey towards achieving this goal, and in enabling a future where landfill is no longer required in blade decommissioning.”

“The key characteristic of composite materials is their unique combination of low weight and high strength. This is governed by the strong bonding of two different materials – fibre and epoxy. The dilemma is that this strong bond is also the feature that renders these materials difficult to recycle. Therefore, the development of CETEC’s novel technology, enabling disassembly of the composite at end-of-life, is a gamechanger, that will allow us to capture the value represented by each material stream in a new circular value chain,” said Simon Frølich, Team Manager, PhD, Danish Technological Institute.

When fully developed, the solution is expected to also have an impact on other industries that rely on thermoset composite in production, such as automotive and aviation.