Blade manufacturers announce joint commitment to support recycling by providing material passports

The DecomBlades innovation project has released a new specification for recycling partners to recycle blade material. To further support easier, cost-efficient, and scalable blade recycling, major wind turbine blade manufacturers have announced their joint commitment to create blade material passports using the DecomBlades recommended approach. They are calling for this document to become a standard for the wind power industry.

Today, there is a market for recycling most of a wind turbine, but there has not been a market for the composite that makes up the blades.

The DecomBlades innovation project addresses this with a new blade material passport, making it easier to dismantle and recycle the blades.

The material passports were developed by mapping out the composition of the blades of three major blade manufacturers: Siemens Gamesa, LM Wind Power, and Vestas, all involved in the DecomBlades innovation project. Other companies, including Nordex Group, Enercon and GE Vernova, are planning to join this initiative aimed at implementing standardized material passports in the wind industry.

Once mapped, the data has formed the basis for a standardized recommendation for blade material passports, which includes what materials are used in the blades and where they are situated. This makes it is easier for recycling companies to separate the blades and recycle the parts.

John Korsgaard, Senior Director, LM Wind Power and Chair of DecomBlades Consortium, explains:

“The wind industry strongly supports the development of viable value chains for recycling blades. With the commitment to provide blade material passports, we hope to accelerate the establishment of a viable market for recycling blades. The information in the blade material passport will be valuable for blade recycling companies and will help them enhance their process efficiency. We need to work together to industrialize the blade recycling sector, enabling 100% blade recycling in the future,”.

Committing to provide a service for legacy products

The European wind power industry has called for a landfill ban on blades in Europe by 2025. To support implementation of the landfill ban, a group of major blade manufacturers have voluntarily committed to provide a material passport as a service for their products.

These material passports will be available on the company websites for representative blade models within each MW category that are nearing their expected decommissioning date. These material passports will be representative for many blades that are built in the same way but come in different sizes.

The companies committing to this service will use recommended content from the DecomBlades material passport to provide recycling companies with a concise, clear, and recognizable format for receiving information about blade materials that supports recycling.

Examples of material passports from LM Wind Power, Vestas, and Siemens Gamesa can be downloaded at www.decomblades.dk. The fully public content is free for anyone to use.

Sophus Borch, Business Development Manager at HJHansen Recycling, one of the partners in the DecomBlades project, states:

“The complex composition of a Wind Turbine Blade makes it very hard to recycle and also very hard to know how to do the pre-processing and further processing of the blade efficiently.

The Blade Material Passport makes this a lot easier. When working on-site we do not need the extremely complex descriptions of the blades, but a simple tool that tells us the dimensions and where we can find the different elements. This means we can speed up our processes at a glance. The Blade Material Passport supports this exact thinking.

Calling for a standard for future products

Beyond the 2025 landfill ban on blades in Europe, blade manufacturers aim to continue to support efficient recycling of future products. Therefore, blade manufacturers are calling for the DecomBlades material passport content to be described in a standard.

This blade material passport would be provided by wind turbine manufacturers to wind power plant developers during the permitting process along with other product documentation, as is current practice.

When the wind turbine nears its end-of-life after 20 years or more, the material passport would be provided by the wind power plant owner to the company handling its decommissioning and recycling. Blade manufacturers can also continue to publish representative material passports on their websites as products near their end-of-life to make these documents easily available to recyclers.

About DecomBlades

The DecomBlades project is partially funded by Innovation Fond Denmark and is a collaboration between MAKEEN Energy, LM Wind Power, Siemens Gamesa, Vestas Wind Systems A/S, Ørsted, Technical University of Denmark (DTU Wind and Energy Systems), University of Southern Denmark (SDU), HJHansen Recycling, FLSmidth, and Energy Cluster Denmark.

The DecomBlades project and the blade material passports will be presented at the WindEurope 2023 annual event in Copenhagen, Denmark. This will happen on Ørsted’s stand at E-D30 on Wednesday, April 26, 2023, 13:00h CET. To attend the event, please contact: tva@energycluster.dk

More information about the project can be found at www.decomblades.dk

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Vingeproducenter går sammen om genanvendelse med nye materialepas

For at understøtte enkel, omkostningseffektiv og skalerbar genanvendelse af vindmøllevinger har flere store vingeproducenter fra vindindustrien forpligtiget sig til at skabe nye materialepas – blade material passports – for vinger. Det sker med afsæt i anbefalinger fra DecomBlades-innovationsprojektet. Virksomhederne vil gøre den fælles tilgang til genanvendelse til en standard for vindindustrien.

Der er allerede et marked for at genanvende det meste af en vindmølle, men ikke for de kompositter, som dele af møllen består af. Det gør partnerne i DecomBlades noget ved med nye dokumenter, materialepas, der gør det lettere at adskille og genanvende vinger.

De nye materialepas for vinger er udviklet på baggrund af en grundig beskrivelse af sammensætningen af vinger fra de tre store vingeproducenter Siemens Gamesa, LM Wind Power og Vestas, der alle er med i DecomBlades. Andre virksomheder som Nordex Group, Enercon og GE Vernova forventer også at blive en del af initiativet, der sigter efter at implementere standardiserede materialepas i vindindustrien.

Datagrundlaget fra projektet har været udgangspunktet for standardiserede anbefalinger til materialepassene, der indeholder information om, hvilke materialer der er anvendt og deres placering i den enkelte vinge. Informationen gør det lettere for genvindingsvirksomheder at adskille vingerne, så de enkelte dele kan bruges igen.

John Korsgaard, Senior Director i LM Wind Power og formand for DecomBlades-konsortiet fortæller:

“Vindindustrien støtter op om udviklingen af bæredygtige værdikæder for genanvendelse af vinger. Ved at levere de nye materialepas håber vi på at nå hurtigere frem til et bæredygtigt marked for vingegenvinding. Informationen i materialepassene vil være værdifuld for virksomheder, der arbejder med genanvendelse af vinger – og vil hjælpe dem med at forbedre deres processer. Vi skal arbejde sammen for at industrialisere sektoren for vingegenvinding, så vi sikrer hundrede procent genanvendelse i fremtiden,” siger John Korsgaard.

Vingernes arv
Den europæiske vindindustri har efterspurgt et forbud mod at sende udtjente vinger på lossepladsen i Europa i 2025 – såkaldt landfill. For at støtte op om implementeringen af forbuddet har en gruppe af store vingeproducenter frivilligt forpligtiget sig til at udarbejde et materialepas som en supplerende service til deres produkter.

Materialepassene vil blive tilgængelige på de enkelte virksomheders hjemmesider for forskellige vingemodeller i hver MW-kategori, der nærmer sig den forventede dato for dekommissionering. De nye pas vil gælde for en række vinger, der er bygget på samme måde, men som kommer i forskellige størrelser.

Virksomheder, der forpligtiger sig til denne service, vil benytte det anbefalede indhold fra DecomBlades’ materialepas til at give genvindingsvirksomheder kort og præcis information om vingematerialerne til genanvendelse.

Eksempler på materialepas fra LM Wind Power, Vestas og Siemens Gamesa kan hentes på decomblades.dk. Materialet er frit tilgængeligt for alle.

Sophus Borch, Business Development Manager hos HJHansen Recycling, der er en af partnerne i DecomBlades, fortæller:

”Den komplekse sammensætning gør det vanskeligt at genanvende en vindmøllevinge. Det er også svært at vide, hvordan man skal behandle vingen effektivt før og under genvindingen. Materialepas for vinger gør dette meget lettere. I det praktiske arbejde har vi ikke brug for ekstremt komplekse beskrivelser af vingerne. Vi skal derimod bruge et simpelt værktøj, der fortæller os om dimensionerne for vingen og hvor vi kan finde de enkelte dele. Det betyder, at vi kan gøre tingene hurtigere med det samme – og netop det understøtter de nye pas,” siger han.

Nye standarder for fremtidens produkter
Efter 2025-forbuddet for landfill i Europa sigter vingeproducenterne fortsat efter at understøtte effektiv genanvendelse af fremtidige produkter. Derfor ønsker producenterne at beskrive indholdet fra de nye materialepas fra DecomBlades i en egentlig standard.

Disse materialepas skal leveres af vingeproducenterne til udviklerne under arbejdet med at få de relevante tilladelser i hus, når der skal opføres nye vindmøller. Det er hensigten, at det skal ske sammen med den gængse praksis for produktdokumentation.