In August 2022, Siemens Gamesa installed its first recyclable blades at the commercial Kaskasi offshore wind farm, and they have now discovered that the same style of fan blades can also be used in onshore wind turbines.

Although wind power can bring a great amount of clean green electricity to the world, the recycling of wind turbines needs to be improved at this stage. Although 85% of wind turbines can be recycled after retirement, the huge blades can only be thrown into landfills. Therefore, Siemens Gamesa launched RecyclableBlade technology, hoping to recycle the composite blade material through a simple degradation process and reuse it in the wind turbine blade manufacturing process to solve the global problem of future offshore wind turbine blade replacement.

The project partner, Aditya Birla Advanced Materials, uses a patented epoxy resin system that allows the recovery of composite materials using mild acidic solutions, allowing wind turbine blades to be reused or repurposed in the consumer product, construction or automotive industries.

Siemens Gamesa also launched the first RecycleBlade for offshore wind power in September 2021 and installed the first 81-meter-long recycled blades at the Kaskasi offshore wind farm in July this year. Now Siemens Gamesa further pointed out that the RecycleBlade onshore fan version can also be used in customer projects but did not specify blade size or manufacturing details.

CEO Jochen Eickholt said this concept has always been foreseen to include both offshore and onshore solutions and the company was delighted to able to offer them commercially to our customers in both markets now.

Siemens Gamesa plans to produce fully recycled wind turbines by 2024 and has partnered with WindEurope and other companies in the industry including GE Renewable Energy and Vestas to call for a ban on sending blades to landfills in European countries.

（Image：Flickr/Michael Mueller CC BY 2.0）