Turn old into new. Vestas offers solution for rotor blade recycling.

Up to now, 85 % of wind turbines could be recycled. The rotor blades made up the rest. Now Vestas has developed a chemical process to get old wind turbine blades back into circulation.

In rotor blades, various materials are glued together in such a way that the wind turbine can also withstand storms. The parts have to resist high loads during use. The tip of the blade can move up to 400 kilometres per hour. At the same time, the turbines must be as light as possible to deliver maximum energy yield. These requirements are made possible by composite materials coated with epoxy resin. Basically, this is a tried and tested material that is very well suited.

Whereas it was previously difficult and expensive to recycle the composite material from a mix of materials that can hardly be broken down into its components, Vestas has now found a way to break down the blades into reusable components. This now makes rotor blades a valuable source of raw material for new turbines.

Read more about this in the IG Windkraft news article (in German).