Recycled Wind Turbine Blades in Clay Bricks: A Sustainable Solution or a Structural Risk?

Wind energy has become a key element in the green transition. While the use of turbines is beneficial to the green energy generation, the disposal of wind turbine blades at end-of-use is a serious burden to the environment as they are a strong composite materials consisting of glass fibers and an organic epoxy matrix. Currently, the blades are difficult or impossible to recycle. Thus, new actions must be taken to reduce this problem. We investigate the possibility to recycle shredded wind turbine blade material as a component of clay bricks in industry. The turbine blades possess two potential advantages as raw materials. First, the glass fibers could act as a fluxing agent to promote sintering, thereby enhancing the mechanical properties of bricks. Second, burning of the epoxy resin could provide additional energy to the firing process of bricks, thereby reducing the energy input during the brick production. In this presentation, we will introduce the potential obstacles in producing composite bricks with wind turbine blade material on both lab and industrial scale. We present an optimization route of the clay-blade-water suspension by varying ratios of the three components. The effect of the suspension viscosity on firing process and the impact of firing temperature on properties of the bricks is discussed.