Recycling Wind Turbine Blades

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Have you ever wondered how green wind energy really is, especially when you see those vast piles of wind turbine blades dumped in landfills? Social media posts with photos of wind turbine blades in landfill have raised this question, casting doubts on the sustainability of wind power. Is it actually horrible for the environment?

Today, we’ll examine why recycling wind turbine blades is such a challenge, focusing on the materials and manufacturing methods involved. Then, we’ll scrutinize the current recycling methods and discuss what needs to change for blades to be effectively recycled. We’ll also evaluate the efforts of wind turbine manufacturers and composite material suppliers towards this goal.

Bookmarks:
00:00 Intro
00:41 Wind turbine waste in context
02:12 Wind turbine blade structural design
05:09 Thermoplastics vs thermosets
06:24 Get 20% of Everything Electric Australia tickets
07:24 Repurposing wind turbine blades
08:06 Shredding
08:26 Cement co-processing
09:53 Thermoplastic wind turbine blades
10:57 Advanced recycling methods
13:42 Energy use and CO2 emissions from recycling
17:08 Outro

Recycling Solar Panels

[solarcycle.us] – Corporate site
[epa.gov] – Solar Panel Recycling

Recycling an iPhone in Seconds with Daisy

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If the 2.24 billion iPhones sold worldwide could be recycled, could Apple stop mining new materials?! The team developing Daisy, the company’s recycling robot, certainly hopes so. In fact, Apple has committed to offering iPhones with 100% recycled cobalt by 2025 and wants to get as much materials currently sitting in retired devices back into the global supply chain. Robert went to see Daisy in action to find out more.

00:00 Robert’s at an Apple Facility
00:31 Recycling electronic waste
01:22 Meet Daisy!
02:08 23 models vs the robots
03:57 Reducing the need for mining
05:58 Bash out the battery
06:53 100% recycled cobalt
08:08 Punch out the screws
09:10 Open source recycling
10:15 Sorting the modules
11:10 100% recycled material?
11:57 Make it last longer
12:15 Feed Daisy!

Recycling Solar Panels

The truth about why solar panels aren’t recycled? Thanks to a 70% drop in price since 2010 and plenty of government subsidies, solar panels have become an integral part of the utility grid, as well as many home rooftops. However, this renewable energy technology isn’t all sunshine. There’s a potential tsunami of panels that will be nearing their end-of-life in the coming years. That fact has concerned many people, as the vast majority of panels here in the U.S. aren’t recycled. Why is that and what happens to these panels at the end of their service life? Is it even possible to recycle solar panels? There’s some interesting advances there that we have to talk about. Let’s see if we can come to a decision on this.

The fact that solar panels aren’t recycled in the US, says more about Americans than solar panels. Americans basically don’t give a f*. One is reminded of pictures from Hawaii and wind turbine blades, dumped in a landfill, used by renewable energy skeptics as an “argument” against wind energy.

[up-to-us.veolia.com] – The first recycling plant in Europe for solar panels!
[tno.nl] – Fully recyclable solar panels on the horizon

Glass Recycling

Glass recycling videos in English, German and Dutch. Why it makes sense to separate glass from other “waste”: glass hardly decays and could remain in the environment for hundreds of thousands of years. The good news, it is infinitely recyclable.

Recycling E-Vehicle Batteries

CNBC – Lithium-ion batteries are everywhere — in phones, laptops, tablets, cameras and increasingly cars. Demand for lithium-ion batteries has risen sharply in the past five years and is expected to grow from a $44.2 billion market in 2020 to a $94.4 billion market by 2025, mostly due to the boom in electric cars. And a shortage of lithium-ion batteries is looming in the U.S.

Former Tesla CTO and Elon Musk’s right-hand man, JB Straubel, started Redwood Materials in 2017 to help address the need for more raw materials and to solve the problem of e-waste. The company recycles end-of-life batteries and then supplies battery makers and auto companies with materials in short supply as EV production surges around the world. Straubel gave CNBC an inside look at its first recycling facility in Carson City, Nevada. Watch the video to learn why battery recycling will be an essential part in making EV production more sustainable.

[wikipedia.org] – J. B. Straubel
[redwoodmaterials.com] – Company site
[businessinsider.com] – Tesla execs are leading a recycling firm that has raised $2 million in funding

The Smashing Story of Recycling Glass