Electricity and Control June 2023

ENERGY MANAGEMENT + THE INDUSTRIAL ENVIRONMENT : PRODUCTS + SERVICES

Recycling wind turbine blades

line with our group’s Sustainability Strategy 2025, ambitious goals have been set, including offering the market a fully recyclable blade within the next decade, with the target set for 2032,” said Nordex Energy South Africa’s Managing Director, Compton Saunders.

Earlier this year, just ahead of the release of its 2022 Sustainability Report, the Nordex Group announced that it is participating, as one of 18 partners, in a sustainability project funded by the European Union, to drive the recycling of high-value materials from wind turbine rotor blades. Currently, 85 to 95% of a Nordex wind turbine is al ready recyclable. For many of the materials used, there are established recycling processes for environmental ly friendly disposal – especially for steel and concrete, which make up the largest share of a wind turbine in the tower and foundation. Turbine rotor blades consist of a combination of different materials including wood, various metals, adhesives, paints and composites. The composites are glass-fibre reinforced plastics and carbon-fibre-reinforced plastics. At the end of their life, rotor blades are more challenging to recycle due to the heterogeneity of the material and the strong adhesion between the fibres and polymers. Recycling processes for these materials are not yet fully established, and reuse of recycled materials is not widespread. As reported over the past few years, the Nordex Group has reduced the carbon footprint of its wind turbines. “In

In order to reach this goal, Nordex has conducted and participated in a number of research and development projects, one of which is the European-funded ‘Wind turbine blades End of Life through Open HUBs for circular materials in sustainable business models’, or EoLO-HUBS for short. The overall objective of the EoLO-HUBS project is to demonstrate and validate a set of innovative composite material recycling technologies which will provide an swers to the three main areas in end-of-life wind farm recycling: Decommissioning and pre-treatment of wind turbine blades; sustainable fibre reclamation processes addressing two alternative routes – low carbon pyrolysis and green chemistry solvolysis; and upgrading process es for the recovered fibres addressing mainly glass fibres as well as carbon fibres. For more information contact Nordex Energy South Africa. Visit: www.nordex-online.com/en/south-africa/

The Nordex Group is working with 17 partners in the EU’s wind turbine blade recycling initiative.

JUNE 2023 Electricity + Control

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