User:Ablerini/Environmental impact of wind power

Waste Management
Modern wind turbine blades are made from plastic/fiberglass composite designs that provide a service lifetime of less than about 20 years. As of February 2018, there was no economical technology and market for recycling these old blades, and the most common disposal procedure is to truck them to landfills. Other options for disposing of the blades includes incinerating the material or grinding it up into powder, but both of these methods is not only expensive, but also inefficient and involves additional energy usage. Blade incineration emits a significant amount of green house gases, though it can be used as a source of heat and power, which somewhat offsets these emissions. Because of their hollow design for less weight, blades can take up an enormous volume compared to their mass, making road transport difficult, expensive, and dangerous due to wide turning berths, extra safety vehicles, and longer flatbed trucks.

Since many blades are still trashed, landfill operators have started requiring blades to be cut to pieces and sometimes crushed before they can be landfilled, which consumes further energy. Along with ongoing development work to extend the generating efficiency and service life of newer turbines, blade recycling solutions continue to be pursued that are economical, energy efficient, and market scalable.

There may be as much as 45% additional waste resulting from processes that occur during the lifecycle of the turbine blades, and it is estimated that total annual blade waste of all countries may reach 2.9 megatons by 2050. In comparison, global solar photovoltaic cell waste is expected to reach about 78 million tons by 2050.

Recycling and Repurposing
As much as 80% of the wind turbine structure can be recycled, though this does not include the foundation of the structure, which is typically made from reinforced concrete, or the blades. Alternatively, these components of the turbine structure that are not easily recycled into new turbines can still be repurposed and used in other ways.

However, large volume is advantageous in repurposing the blades as playground structures, bike shelters, and, pending future approval, possibly a bridge. Other recycling methods include creating pellets for waterproof boards and injectable plastics, as well as pyrolysis for producing paints, glues, and both cement and concrete. Carbon fiber blades can now be recycled, the fiber first being separated from the epoxy resin binder, then chopped into small particles. After the separation, the resin is used as a fuel source for the next materials to be processed. After pyrolysis, the resulting material can be further separated and the glass fibers extracted to be used in insulation or fiber reinforcement.

The blades may also be repurposed into building materials and structural components, for example, using composite material formed from the blades as aggregate in concrete. Research indicates that turbine blades could successfully be repurposed as electrical transmission poles as their strength and structural stability was found to be comparable to the materials that are typically used. Sections of the blades have been adapted to create roofs for small houses and these structures meet the requirements of building codes and may prove to be a viable way to reuse blade materials without extensive processes needed to make the material usable. Components of the turbine could be reused by implementing segmentation, where the object is divided into different elements. Research on segmentation suggests that the resulting materials are better than conventional construction materials when measuring specific flexural stiffness and flexural strength.

Overall, there are several different avenues through which wind turbine components can be recycled, reused, or repurposed, all with their advantages and disadvantages, and there continues to be research conducted to determine even more ways that the materials can economically utilized. While various methods for recycling or repurposing the turbine blades have been proven effective, they have not been implemented on a large enough scale to adequately address the rapidly rising amounts of turbine blade waste being produced.

Alternative Building Materials
In addition to carbon fiber blades sometimes being installed due to lower weight and higher strength and durability compared to fiberglass-epoxy composites, as of April 8, 2020 there is now a wind turbine with a modular wooden structural support trunk in Gothenburg, Sweden, which is stronger, lighter, easier to recycle and transport, and more carbon-neutral than steel. These wooden towers would not need to be recycled as often as steel due to their fire-resistance and higher tolerance of metal-oxidizing chemicals. Other alternative building materials include recyclable polymers (thermoplastic, recyclable thermosets, polyurethane), bamboo, natural fiber composites, biodegradable resins, and bio-based carbon fibers.

Research on wind turbine materials also focuses on how to make the turbine blades more resistant to damage as this would extend their lifespan and reduce the replacement turnover. In addition to adapting the materials used in the blades to increase their resistance to damage, there are also potential methods of altering the turbine's activity during certain weather events in order to decrease any damage caused by wind or rain.