‘Brief burst of intense heat’ could give hard-to-recycle wind turbine blades a second life

Wind energy has been described as one of the “cheapest and most scalable solutions” to the climate crisis – but its boom is creating growing concern.Turbines dotted across Europe and its waters are engineered to withstand some of the harshest conditions, from intense UV radiation to strong wind gusts, extreme temperatures and even lightning strikes. While around 85 to 90 per cent of a wind turbine’s total mass can be recycled, the durability of the blades makes it difficult for the remaining elements to be reprocessed.

Wind turbine blades are clogging up Europe’s landfillsAs a result, many turbine blades end up in landfill sites once they are decommissioned, typically after 20 years of service, or are incinerated.Annual decommissioned blade waste in Europe is projected to increase from 20,000 tonnes in 2025 to 55,000 tonnes by 2030 as older fleets reach their end-of-life. WindEurope, the European wind industry association, introduced a voluntary industry-wide landfill ban that came into effect last year to tackle this.

The association is urging EU policymakers to enshrine the ban into formal legislation, arguing it would further accelerate the development of sustainable recycling technologies.Wind turbines undergo flash joule heatingResearchers have recently discovered a new way to give hard-to-recycle wind turbine blades a second life – by subjecting them to a “brief burst of intense heat”.The study, published in the science journal Chem Circularity, found so-called ‘flash joule heating’ can transform blades – often made from silica-containing fiberglass and carbon-rich polymer resin – into silicon carbide and graphene, two valuable materials for manufacturing.

Blades were heated to about 2,000°C in seconds; at such high temperatures, carbon can react with silica to form silicon carbide, a hard, heat-resistant material.Carbon can also reorganise into graphene under these conditions, a material known for its strength and ability to conduct heat and electricity. The research team found that adding the broken-down blades to other materials before heating made the new material more useful for creating new rotor blades.

Just 0.3 per cent (by weight) of the recovered materials was able to make resin stiffer and stronger and improve its resistance to deformation by 27 per cent under tension and nine per cent when bent.“The mixture of silicon carbide and graphene can be incorporated back into resins for new wind turbine blades, improving their mechanical and thermal properties,” says senior author and chemical and environmental engineer Bing Deng of Tsinghua University, China.“That is more than recycling – it’s upcycling.

We’re turning something that has little value into something that’s worth much more.”