Wind turbines have come a long way in the last 25 years, and their bright clean spires still inspire hope that we may yet dodge the bullet of global warming. But, like all things in the real world, they have a downside. Because the blades are designed to be incredibly resilient for the twenty years or so of their working life, they are hard to dispose of at the end,and very often just end up in landfill.
Now a team of scientists at Tsinghua University[1] led by the ingenious Dr Bing Deng have found a way around all that. So today we showcase this encouraging report by Gaby Clarke and Robert Egan for Cell Press via the excellent Tech Explore website,[2] because it’s all rather hopeful. The idea was to use a technique called Flash Joule Heating, which blasts the old blades at 20000 C , transforming them into Silicon Carbide (SiC) and Graphene (C).[3] [4] Both of which are excellent building materials, as astute readers will have already spotted. And note the key piece of learning, which the authors hand directly to a quote by Dr Deng:
This is more than recycling. It’s upcycling,” says Deng. “We’re turning something that has little value into something that’s worth much more.”
We look forward already to the new process being scaled up and applied at an industrial scale. But click on the hyper to find out the full details.
Well, there’s much to be happy about here, gentle readers. For one thing we still remember the gleeful sneers of those who opposed every aspect of wind turbines, and their finger-pointing at accumulating piles of old blades. That may suddenly be as out of date as their ideas on oil and coal. But at a deeper level we think the story shows how the calm application of the scientific method can actually solve many of our problems, if we are patient enough to use it. Isn’t that what this blog is all about?
[2]Scientists give hard-to-recycle wind turbine blades a second life
[3]Silicon carbide – Wikipedia
#global warming # Wind turbines # Tsinghua University #silicon carbide #graphene #upcycling #recycling #sustainability #climate change #engineering #chemistry
