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The gearboxes are recyclable, the blades can be buried in a landfill or shredded into fine material to mix in with concrete. It's really a non-issue compared t

The gearboxes are recyclable, the blades can be buried in a landfill or shredded into fine material to mix in with concrete. It's really a non-issue compared to burning the remainder of fossil fuels (everything still buried).

potato3732842 2y ago
It's dumb and a reflection of our business and regulatory environment that it's cheaper/better to invest labor and energy to shred something like blades and columns than to simply truck them away in whole or in part and then use them for other things. We're basically talking about huge glass reinforced resin cylinders and non-flat sheets here. I can think of tons of potential uses at the right price.
- mech987876 2y ago
  About the only thing I agree with you in terms of repurposability would be the vertical column. And even then, you have to find the right buyer. For everything else, my intuition is the shredding it down for recycling is by far easier than repurposing. I haven't done any math on it though.
  - potato3732842 2y ago
    I'm sure if you filled a field full of 8.5 x 20/30/40ft slices of blade someone would buy them for something. Interleaved and stuck in the ground as a retaining wall or similar seems like a fairly obvious choice. Any screeching about quality or defects can pretty much be overcome by just using more since they're waste after all.
- mystified5016 2y ago
  Decommissioned blades are probably not that useful as raw material. What use could you have for a randomly curved segment of carbon fiber or fiberglass resin which has already been weathered and worn down for years? You can't use the entire blade: for one they're ridiculously huge and have a very inconvenient shape. You'd have to hire people to cut them up, test each segment for defects, and somehow find buyers for randomly shaped offcuts. It'd probably cost a lot more than grinding them up into powders that already have commercial use. No one would want the used sections. They're pre-damaged and would come at the same or higher cost than new. At the same time, new material gives you the choice over size and shape. I don't see it as a really practical solution. Some things just can't be reused, so we have to break it back down to raw materials and recycle it. That's about the best you can expect from something intended to be a consumable replacement part.

potato3732842 2y ago

It's dumb and a reflection of our business and regulatory environment that it's cheaper/better to invest labor and energy to shred something like blades and columns than to simply truck them away in whole or in part and then use them for other things. We're basically talking about huge glass reinforced resin cylinders and non-flat sheets here. I can think of tons of potential uses at the right price.

mech987876 2y ago
About the only thing I agree with you in terms of repurposability would be the vertical column. And even then, you have to find the right buyer. For everything else, my intuition is the shredding it down for recycling is by far easier than repurposing. I haven't done any math on it though.
- potato3732842 2y ago
  I'm sure if you filled a field full of 8.5 x 20/30/40ft slices of blade someone would buy them for something. Interleaved and stuck in the ground as a retaining wall or similar seems like a fairly obvious choice. Any screeching about quality or defects can pretty much be overcome by just using more since they're waste after all.
mystified5016 2y ago
Decommissioned blades are probably not that useful as raw material. What use could you have for a randomly curved segment of carbon fiber or fiberglass resin which has already been weathered and worn down for years? You can't use the entire blade: for one they're ridiculously huge and have a very inconvenient shape. You'd have to hire people to cut them up, test each segment for defects, and somehow find buyers for randomly shaped offcuts. It'd probably cost a lot more than grinding them up into powders that already have commercial use. No one would want the used sections. They're pre-damaged and would come at the same or higher cost than new. At the same time, new material gives you the choice over size and shape. I don't see it as a really practical solution. Some things just can't be reused, so we have to break it back down to raw materials and recycle it. That's about the best you can expect from something intended to be a consumable replacement part.