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That 'can't be recycled' clickbait headline is completely refuted by TFA which quotes from one company already doing it. "One start-up, Global Fiberglass Solut

That 'can't be recycled' clickbait headline is completely refuted by TFA which quotes from one company already doing it. "One start-up, Global Fiberglass Solutions, developed a method to break down blades and press them into pellets and fiber boards to be used for flooring and walls.... 'We can process 99.9% of a blade and handle about 6,000 to 7,000 blades a year per plant...'

avmich 7y ago
Fiberglass is roughly glass in the fiber form. Glass was recycled for ages, just melt it and produce new products from molten glass.
- protastus 7y ago
  Fiberglass is a composite that contains a lot of resin. It's not pure glass.
  - avmich 7y ago
    Resin can be chemically removed or even burned out. Surely it's a question of economy, among other things, but at least we have a choice of technological approaches.
    - eru 7y ago
      You could do that, but that would be getting rid of most of what makes fibreglass interesting and expensive. Recycling glass isn't that much better than just using fresh sand.
anonsivalley652 7y ago
The blades aren't just fiberglass but a complex mixture of FRPs which includes glass, plastic, binders and resins. Furthermore, they're layered and vary with distance from the hub and position on the airfoil. Recycling them isn't impossible, just more difficult because of the nature of separating components and removing undesirable/unreusable components. Although the do carry incredible forces (not quite in the region of turbojet/turbofan blades but still impressive), there's probably more work to be done to make the blades fully lifecycle-designed to make them easier to recycle.
beerandt 7y ago
They're doing it on paper so the Toyotas of the world can continue to claim to be zero waste. That's the product. The pellets seem to be a "recycled product" without a real world use, other than being able to claim your turbine blade was recycled. The company's landing page even brags about the process using blockchain as a selling point. In what is essentially crushing fiberglass. It's a sham. Google turns up pages of paid PR pieces and reputation generating sites. They list potential uses of the pellets produced, but not a single real world example of an actual sale or use. No published info on adding value to an LCA. Or it being worth the energy expended to actually crush/process them after shipping the blades cross country. They're a landfill substitute that provides a certificate, a paper trail, and good PR.
tinus_hn 7y ago
It’s just another excuses in the line that also has the ‘its bad for birds’ one.
- 8bitsrule 7y ago
  Whereas shooting passenger-pigeons for fun and profit was just fine. But, then, scraping the bottom-of-the-barrel has been in for the past 3.

avmich 7y ago

Fiberglass is roughly glass in the fiber form. Glass was recycled for ages, just melt it and produce new products from molten glass.

protastus 7y ago
Fiberglass is a composite that contains a lot of resin. It's not pure glass.
- avmich 7y ago
  Resin can be chemically removed or even burned out. Surely it's a question of economy, among other things, but at least we have a choice of technological approaches.
  - eru 7y ago
    You could do that, but that would be getting rid of most of what makes fibreglass interesting and expensive. Recycling glass isn't that much better than just using fresh sand.

anonsivalley652 7y ago

The blades aren't just fiberglass but a complex mixture of FRPs which includes glass, plastic, binders and resins. Furthermore, they're layered and vary with distance from the hub and position on the airfoil. Recycling them isn't impossible, just more difficult because of the nature of separating components and removing undesirable/unreusable components. Although the do carry incredible forces (not quite in the region of turbojet/turbofan blades but still impressive), there's probably more work to be done to make the blades fully lifecycle-designed to make them easier to recycle.

beerandt 7y ago

They're doing it on paper so the Toyotas of the world can continue to claim to be zero waste. That's the product. The pellets seem to be a "recycled product" without a real world use, other than being able to claim your turbine blade was recycled. The company's landing page even brags about the process using blockchain as a selling point. In what is essentially crushing fiberglass. It's a sham. Google turns up pages of paid PR pieces and reputation generating sites. They list potential uses of the pellets produced, but not a single real world example of an actual sale or use. No published info on adding value to an LCA. Or it being worth the energy expended to actually crush/process them after shipping the blades cross country. They're a landfill substitute that provides a certificate, a paper trail, and good PR.

tinus_hn 7y ago

It’s just another excuses in the line that also has the ‘its bad for birds’ one.

8bitsrule 7y ago
Whereas shooting passenger-pigeons for fun and profit was just fine. But, then, scraping the bottom-of-the-barrel has been in for the past 3.