Wind turbine blades are like giant, tough plastic-glass sandwiches that are nearly impossible to break down, so they usually end up in landfills. This project creates a way to chop them up and use chemistry to separate the glass and carbon fibers from the glue. It's like un-baking a cake to get the original ingredients back so they can be used to make new products.
Wind turbine blades are mostly made of fiberglass composites that cannot be easily recycled, leading to massive amounts of waste in landfills. There is currently no efficient, large-scale industrial system to recover these materials profitably.
A digital knowledge hub for circular economy data and a set of physical tools for mobile dismantling, cutting, and shredding of blades.
If you are a wind farm operator dealing with aging turbines and landfill restrictions — this project developed a mobile dismantling platform and sorting tools that allow you to process blades on-site. This reduces transport costs and ensures a zero-pollution decommissioning process.
If you are a manufacturer dealing with high raw material costs — this project developed green chemistry solvolysis and low carbon pyrolysis to recover high-quality glass and carbon fibers. You can use these recovered materials to create new heavy composite parts.
If you are a recycling firm dealing with difficult-to-process composite waste — this project developed a digital knowledge hub and material passports. This provides the data needed to create profitable business agreements for recycled composite materials.
Based on available project data, specific pricing is not provided, but the project is developing a cost-benefit analysis tool within its digital platform to guide these calculations.
The project is currently preparing pilot demonstrations in two regions, the Northern Hub and Southern Hub, to validate the large-scale value chain.
Based on available project data, the project uses an 'Open HUB' model to co-design and share data, though specific licensing terms for the technologies are not listed.
The project focuses on zero-pollution and zero-waste goals to move away from landfilling and incineration of wind turbine blades.
The project runs from 2023-01-01 to 2026-12-31, with the goal of contributing to a circular economy by 2030.
The consortium is heavily weighted toward industrial application, with 8 industry partners (44% ratio) and 6 research organizations. The presence of 4 SMEs and partners across 7 European countries suggests a strong focus on commercial scalability and regional market adaptation rather than purely academic research.
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