Читать книгу Energy - Группа авторов - Страница 41
2.3.2.1.5 Recycling of Materials
ОглавлениеIn recent times, recycling of various materials in the wind energy sector has become popular due to reduction in cost for power generation. By increasing the three R's i.e. reduce, reuse and recycle of raw materials, residues, metals and other resources in the wind sector will cut down the overall cost of electricity generation. At present, about 2.5 million tonnes of composite materials are used in the wind energy sector. In the next five years, around 12,000 wind turbines will be out of service in Europe (www.recycling‐magazine.com) which will produce large amounts of materials that need to be recycled. For the recycling of materials, mechanical process i.e. cutting the turbine blades into smaller slices for easy transport or thermal processes such as combustion or pyrolysis provide viable options (WindEurope 2017). For the circular economy along with the production of new blades, reuse of decommissioned blades after some processing should be considered (WindEurope 2017). For example, the Dreamwind project (Designing REcyclable Advanced Materials for WIND energy) is working towards the development of a chemical substance which can separate the glass (expensive component) from the plastic fibres by heating the composite materials at 600 °C. After the separation and cleaning, the glass component produced from the recycling process can be used in making new blades for wind turbines (www.dreamwind.dk).