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Kids playground built from discarded wind turbine parts (2017)
- Scoundreller 7y agoIt looks nice and I can appreciate the story, but saying « discarded » makes it sound like it has no value, but Scrap structural steel definitely does. > designed the Wikado Playground to address the issue of saving out-of-service wind turbines from landfill. Nononono.
- floatingatoll 7y agoCan you please share more about what value scrap structural steel has that you see?
- scblock 7y agoMost metals are relatively easily recycled. Therefore scrap metal has value as feedstock for production of new equipment. A modern wind turbine tower might have 150 metric tons of steel in it, which absolutely makes sense to recycle.
- sp332 7y agofloatingatoll meant in the article.
- floatingatoll 7y agoThat answer was the path of answer I hoped to hear, actually.
- spqr0a1 7y agoThe article mentions "composite material". From the pictures it is hard to say whether it is fiberglass/polyester, carbon fiber/epoxy or what; but either way these materials are much harder to recycle than steel.
- scblock 7y agoWind turbine blades, such as those used on this playground, are typically not recycled and have little scrap value. Their structure is primarily of fiberglass, some with carbon fiber, often with foam and balsa wood as well. There is some metal, typically in the lightning protection system (copper and aluminum) and blade root (blade studs, covers, possibly a steel blade root insert), but they do not comprise the majority of the structure. On decommissioning it is relatively common for blades to be shredded and landfilled.
- kaybe 7y agoI've just read some book proposing to make the blades out of natural fiber materials such as bamboo. There seems to be quite a lot of research going on. Edit: The article does indeed appear to talk about composite materials. > According to research, there will be, at current growth rates, 225,000 tonnes of rotor blade composite material produced annually worldwide
- TeMPOraL 7y ago> > According to research, there will be, at current growth rates, 225,000 tonnes of rotor blade composite material produced annually worldwide My heart hurts when I re-read this as "225,000 tonnes of rotor blade composite material landfilled anually worldwide N years from now", N being the average lifetime of a wind turbine.
- TheSpiceIsLife 7y agoIs that better or worse than the X tones of carbon emissions diverted? Will any of the composite materials breakdown over time and leach in to water supplies?
- TeMPOraL 7y agoFor the problem of global warming itself, given positive EROI, it's better to have those turbines and emit that less carbon. But for the problem of not running out of resources, it may be worse. In a way, under existing economic regime you can pretty much consider renewables as non-renewable energy sources. A wind turbine doesn't burn non-renewable fuel, but it does "burn" non-renewable construction materials. Of course, climate change is the more pressing problem now, but I'm not 100% sure how much more pressing, given the exponents involved in all of this. Most of all, just thinking about how even renewable energy is entirely embedded in our process of transforming raw resources into waste (with a little bit of economic value extracted in the middle) just breaks my heart.
- tpkj 7y ago"Unfurling The Waste Problem Caused By Wind Energy" https://www.npr.org/2019/09/10/759376113/unfurling-the-waste-problem-caused-by-wind-energy https://www.npr.org/2019/09/10/759376113/unfurling-the-waste...
- Kenji 7y agoWhat a beautiful playground. I like it!
- carapace 7y agoAirplane Park in San Francisco used to be a literal airplane. It was a F-8 Crusader jet with its guts scooped out. https://sfrecpark.org/project/larsen-park-jet-playground/ https://sfrecpark.org/project/larsen-park-jet-playground/
- caf 7y agoSubmarine park featuring a decommissioned submarine: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/holbrook-submarine https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/holbrook-submarine
- powerbroker 7y agoWish we could do something similar with solar cells. Seems to me, that some sections could be used to make streamlined coffins -- so you can slip into the afterlife a little faster. Maybe a blade tip could be placed on a turret of a ship, so as to generate a little extra push, in much the same way sails did a century ago. I suppose that such material would make excellent berm material when constructing levees. The list goes on...
- powerbroker 7y ago... cisterns; vessels to hold petrochemicals at plants; artificial reef substrate (check with an environmental scientist first); roofs at out-door shelters (as may be found at highway rest-stops); plinths for a Neo-antiquity Stonehenge; I could go on...
- pjc50 7y agoSolar cells strike me as highly recycleable. https://www.veolia.com/en/newsroom/news/recycling-photovoltaic-panels-circular-economy-france https://www.veolia.com/en/newsroom/news/recycling-photovolta...
- zelon88 7y agoI know that material fatigues over time, but 225,000 tons of turbine blades annually sounds excessive. Why so much waste? Couldn't older ones be retro-fitted with newer rotating internal components to extend the life of the structural components and the blades? I just can't see such a massive structure being discarded just to be replaced with a unit which is probably very similar.
- abathur 7y agoI posted separately a link to a YouTube profile of the architect. He mentions later in the video that the blades are taken out of service when hairline cracks are found in them.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- abathur 7y agoI was curious how the playground looked in use, a question well-answered by this profile discussing the project that I found on YouTube: https://youtu.be/V4C4RQcyrSo https://youtu.be/V4C4RQcyrSo
- tpkj 7y agoAn NPR article on the topic: "Unfurling The Waste Problem Caused By Wind Energy" https://www.npr.org/2019/09/10/759376113/unfurling-the-waste-problem-caused-by-wind-energy https://www.npr.org/2019/09/10/759376113/unfurling-the-waste... "...Ninety percent of a turbine's parts can be recycled or sold, according to Van Vleet, but the blades, made of a tough but pliable mix of resin and fiberglass — similar to what spaceship parts are made from — are a different story. 'The blades are kind of a dud because they have no value,' he said. Decommissioned blades are also notoriously difficult and expensive to transport. They can be anywhere from 100 to 300 feet long and need to be cut up onsite before getting trucked away on specialized equipment — which costs money — to the landfill. ..."
- mcv 7y agoIn that case using them for playground and similar projects sounds like a brilliant solution.
- dusted 7y agoAren't wind turbine blades made of generally annoying/nasty stuff such as various interesting epoxy components and glass fiber? I've seen how sick working with manufacturing can make people, so I'm not sure I'd want kids exposed, since they'll crawl around on them and touch them, likely wearing the material down and releasing small particles that may get into the skin or airways.
- turk73 7y agoWhen I saw communities setting up these wind turbines in order to virtue signal, I knew exactly what the outcome would be. Here we are, not 10 years later, most of the turbines are inoperable and require very expensive repairs to get working again. Most will be torn down.
- dasKrokodil 7y agoMaybe we should start (or better return to) making the blades from wood. https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2019/06/wooden-wind-turbines.html https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2019/06/wooden-wind-turbines...