Vestas hails breakthrough for recyclable wind turbines | Hacker News Reader

Vestas hails breakthrough for recyclable wind turbines

energymonitor.ai

65 pointskasperni64 comments

Interestingly, blade waste, when put in comparison to the size of the population, is pretty negligible.

As per the article, the EU will discard about 650k tons of blades between 2044 and 2049, or 130k tons per year. That's less than 300 grams (or 0.7 lb) per EU citizen.

I'm wondering if these waste could not better be reused as construction material (e.g. grinded to pieces and then used as concrete aggregate).

The problem isn't necessarily the mass of the waste but the volume.

https://media.gettyimages.com/photos/pieces-of-wind-turbine-...

Wind turbine blades are not crushed or pulverized but buried whole.

Why couldn't these be cut in transportable pieces and then industrially grinded?

So, they need a grinder?

Does not seem like a hard technical problem.

https://blog.ucsusa.org/james-gignac/wind-turbine-blades-rec...

"But the blades are different as they are made up of fiberglass (a composite material) to be lightweight for efficiency yet still durable enough to withstand storms. The mixed nature of the blade material makes separating the plastics from the glass fibers to recycle into a workable fiberglass material difficult—and the strength needed for the blades means they are also physically challenging to break apart."

> "the strength needed for the blades means they are also physically challenging to break apart."

Obvious BS, just try harder. Crush them with a big steam roller or with a crane that drops a heavy thing on them. There are a thousand ways to break strong things. Then bulldoze the fragments into an industrial shredder, and bury the result. No need to separate the "fiberglass material" for recycling, thermoset resins don't recycle for shit anyway. Crush it and bury it, this whole thing is an imaginary problem.

They're hollow, right? Fill them with water and a moderate explosive charge, crack!

Why can’t you just incinerate them?

The same reason we bury other trash instead of incinerating it.

It's better to be in the Earth than in the atmosphere.

It would require a massive grinder with very hard steel discs. It would be hard to avoid congestion issues with such hard materials going through it. Maybe this is solved problem territory, but grinders seem tricky to make right at all scales. Plenty can go wrong because such massive forces can be involved.

Nothing that TNT or RDX can't fix in a hurry

SSI Shredders seems to agree it's not hard:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuBeq3M2hvA

Might not be hard as in difficult but those teeth look pretty hard as in Rockwell scale.

I think I have read 5 of these turbine recycling articles and I really don't get the problem. My best guess is that countries that export or incinerate the majority of their trash have no place to bury the blades, so recycling is the best option to get rid of them.

Wind energy opponents have successfully played this up as an issue to divide environmentalists.

The correct response to this is of course that wind turbine landfill isn’t a problem at all.

Windmill recycling, battery recycling, and land impacts of lithium mining are the three legs of the fossil fuel propaganda war. Other skirmishes include base load, range anxiety, and PV panel disposal.

So when are those issues acceptable to talk about without assuming they are propaganda?

I do support alternative sources of energy, but what you've listed are serious sticking points that should be discussed and addressed, not just handwaving it away as propaganda.

It's similar to ignoring nuclear as a base load, ignoring that we decreased emissions by replacing coal with nat. gas, ignoring that train derailments are worse than pipelines, etc.

It would be better to openly talk about these things instead of just saying things like "oh well it's only so many tons of waste, or that much child labor, it must be some oil shill trying to trick us".

Talk about it all you want, but know that the fact that the press has run 1000s of stories about the land impact of lithium mining and has never run even one single article about the much, much, much larger land impacts of fossil fuel production is indicative of an organized backroom propaganda effort. Same thing for these other non-issues of renewable energy waste.

I've seen tons of articles about impacts of fossil fuel production on land.

I just don't see why one mineral being pulled out of the ground seems taboo to talk about because it's potential propaganda, could it not go the other way as well with that logic?

I mean, if we scaled any higher and did replace fossil fuels, would mining lithium/rare metals and the lifespan of batteries/PV panels be worse than mining nat. gas?

These are serious questions that would benefit from a serious calculation.

It's because the scale is completely disproportionate. The largest proposed lithium mine in the world will disturb 6000 acres, a negligible area. In the United Stats alone there are five million acres scraped flat for oil and gas production and 25 million more acres under lease. The entire meme about how lithium mining is a relevant environmental disturbance has been invented out of whole cloth by oil companies.

These are not, in fact, serious questions.

But aren't the scales of production/output disproportionate as well?

What would the impact of mining lithium be if it did need to meet the needs that oil and gas is currently serving?

Comparing the effects of lithium mining vs nat. gas fracking on the land at the expected full scale needs an unbiased approach. Not to mention the supply and humanitarian issues.

The thing you are currently doing is known as JAQing off.

Lithium is not comparable to oil and gas. An EV contains a few kilos of lithium, which is perfectly recyclable and not consumed. Meanwhile the average American motorist buys and burns 2 metric tons of motor fuel every year.

No it's called the socratic method. You've ignored the meat of my question and now try to label it as bad faith I assume with that term.

I was asking about the scale of lithium mining if it were to replace nat. gas and coal for energy production. Not just EVs. Have you seen a study of the projected impact of that?

My dude, did you just compare your behavior in this thread to Socrates?

No my dude, I referenced the term socratic method.

Many people use the method everyday without comparing themselves to the man personally.

When you use the scientific method, you aren't comparing yourself to Francis Bacon are you?

Also, you seemed to have veered off topic, please reply to the last sentence of my last reply if you wish to continue talking to me.

If you're using the socratic method, you're not debating, you're teaching. One interpretation is you have a stance and you're trying to get someone there and not particularly interested in what they have to say.

No it means you are trying to get them to clarify their stance and explain their reasoning so you can understand them better.

It's acceptable to talk about when one is listening as well as talking.

When the conversation goes both ways, something is accomplished. When one is bringing up doubt without any intention of having that doubt assuaged, but only to spread that doubt to others, it's not good behavior.

Only you can ascertain your own motivations. But anyone can listen in and tell when valid answers are being ignored.

> But anyone can listen in and tell when valid answers are being ignored.

While I do agree that does happen I've also seen many people try to mind read others and assume bad faith when they were in fact asking genuine questions, and it's happened to me as well (it's actually happening now in a thread below). It's harder to read others than you think.

Sometimes people are so dug into their camp they assume bad faith because the questions threaten them and cause a fight/flight reaction instead of simply responding to the substance.

A lot of the times, it's just the socratic method being applied to you, but if you think the questions contain misinformation... the best way to fight misinformation, is with more information.

I can tell when there is a pattern of someone repeating the same falsehoods despite correction. I cannot know what their motivation truly is but I can apply Occam's razor for a shrewd guess.

The problem is when there is not adequate "correction" or the correction is not agreed upon, or even stated. Many times the question is ignored entirely under the assumption it is in bad faith.

You may have just not convinced the person that your believed truth trumps their believed truth.

It requires communication, which pretty much never involves assuming a question is bad. If it's reiterated, then respond with your same point in more detail and ask for a response to that.

When we are honest about it. How much waste is there from a coal or gas power plant? It takes a wind turbine less than a day to make up for all the oil in the gears (vs if you burned the oil in a power plant), and they run for years after that.

I don't know these answers, that's why I'd like more people that were knowledgable to talk about the entire carbon cycle of wind turbines with actual numbers and sources.

Many people have discussed this. You can simply google and read to realize that your concerns are unfounded.

Asking someone to go Google something is not a debate, it just shows your ignorance on the topic.

Also throwing out random statements and saying "trust me bro, Google it" is not a valid way to debate or source your statements.

If you're so confident in your ability to find the answer, by all means provide it.

Every and all issues are discussed. Ad nauseam. (Just not in corporate media.)

For instance, here's a recent snapshot from Dec 2022:

"The state of the lithium-ion battery recycling market. A conversation with battery analyst Yayoi Sekine of BNEF."

https://www.volts.wtf/p/the-state-of-the-lithium-ion-battery...

FYI, "BNEF" = Bloomberg New Energy Fund. Meaning this the POV of financial markets and institutional investors. Not just some random bloggers.

Base load is not propaganda. Grid stability and reliability is absolutely mandatory. We can't move off of fossil fuels if that means rolling blackouts when renewable energy generation is low. There are a variety of potential solutions but it will take decades to deploy those at scale.

Correct.

Here's a snapshot of the merchants of doubt whackamole from Dec 2022.

"The right-wing groups behind renewable energy misinformation. A conversation with journalist Michael Thomas."

https://www.volts.wtf/p/the-right-wing-groups-behind-renewab...

And if that doesn't work just repeat "bird deaths" over and over.

So what percentage of items constructed from epoxy composites are wind turbine blades? How can this be more than a rounding error compared to sailboats, sports equipment and whatever else?

> 14,158 total sailboats manufactured in North America per year

> The number of turbines installed in the U.S. each year varies based on a number of factors, but on average 3,000 turbines have been built in the U.S. each year since 2005.

Assuming one blade is about one boat and each turbine has three, very similar numbers.

Too bad the blades can’t be reused as boats.

A lot of those sailboats are smaller boats as well. There are a lot of one-two person sale boats that you can tow behind your car. There are of course a few large yachts, but even then I'm not sure they are larger than a turbine blade (have you ever seen one up close? They go by my house often and each is much longer than any other truck that is legal)

Surprising. Thanks.

Blades are 170-350 feet long, very slender and high-speed (i.e. it's probably quite thick and heavily-reinforced). That's probably 10-100 sailboats per blade.

What I'm hearing is we need to build turbines with blades that can be repurposed as majorly long sailboats.

Difficult to find specific numbers but looks like more money is spent on epoxy for wind turbines than all other composites combined [1]. In any case it is not a rounding error.

[1] https://www.grandviewresearch.com/static/img/research/global...

[2] https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/epoxy-re...

Props for researching the actual stats

Take a look at the big blades up close. I'd hazard that a single blade might have the equivalent mass of a hundred boat hulls or a hundred-thousand hockey sticks.

I think the sailboats are the rounding error.

I can't quite convey just how mind bogglingly enormous the wind turbines we are talking about are. One illustrative point that might help: inside of the head (very small compared to the turbines) they often build a fully functioning workshop inside, because its less work than transporting the machinery down to fix. They build hundreds of these things in offshore farms.

Fiberglass repair is quite well understood. Part of the problem is some early turbine blades used wood cores which are incredibly difficult to repair. But if they used synthetic cores (coosa board) they'd have a stable core to repair for centuries. Maybe they figure it costs more to repair than to replace, which could easily be true. Either way it's not a huge problem, look how much the average American tosses in the trash every week. But I'd still like them repaired

Blades age out because degradation of the laminate weakens the blade, and leading edge erosion...

If they are hard to recycle or break, why not re-use them? Fix all tears and coating issues and put them up again?

Disregarding structural wear and tear. A turbine blade is typically in a service between 20 to 25 years. If you look at a size comparison of wind turbines that are commissioned today and those that were commissioned 25 years. You will find that the average blade length has gone up 3-4 times.

There's been pretty much one major factor that made wind turbines more efficient: They got bigger. And it doesn't look like this trend is going to stop any time soon.

Nobody wants your tiny wind turbine blades from 20 years ago, because when you put up new wind turbines you want the big, new, more efficient ones.

At some point I expect blades will be made from thermoplastic composites, not thermosets. Then it will just be a matter of melting the blades to recycle them. A lot is happening in that area at least, thermoplastics for airplanes are very actively researched

Although many blades are made from polyester, producing wind turbine blades manufactured with epoxy-based resin has increasingly become standard practice in the wind industry over the past decades. In the most mature wind markets, the first of these turbines are reaching the end of their operational life

Interesting, why polyester?

Wind turbine blades need to be as lightweight as possible. Imagine the shear and tear forces applied on the turbine’s tower. At the same time, the blades have to be extremely resistant to resist to their own weight and to the wind applying forces perpendicular to the main axis.

Polyester is cheap and lightweight. Material strength is then infused in it using fiberglass.

Most fibreglass products are made with either polyester resin, or epoxy resin. Epoxy being the more expensive option with a couple of advantages over polyester.

In 20 years, I wonder if we'll be disposing of more composite turbines or airframes.

It does annoy me somewhat that wind turbines are all of eco friendly, short lifespan, made from plastic and concrete at the same time. Unpopular opinion though.

Well, I suppose it’s worth asking what a coal or gas fired plant is made of. In any case, it appears to be a problem people are working on

I think it’s an acceptable price to pay in exchange for the massive amounts of clean energy they create.

And we can probably find ways to extend the lifespan, it we want to.

Do you have a better alternative?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com