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The BLADES2BUILD consortium combines world-leading industrial partners with cutting-edge European universities to create an innovative solution for End-Of-Life Wind Turbine Blades.

By 2030, Renewable Energy Sources, and its infrastructures, are expected to increase by 40% in Europe. Wind energy is one of the most popular and applicable source.

The repowering in the wind energy sector brings an enormous waste stream of end-of-life wind blades. Today, these blades are being deposited directly in landfills, with no circular options available in the market.

The aim of BLADES2BUILD is to improve and support circularity options of end-of-life wind blades by exploring three different circular stages:

• Direct re-use of the EOL wind blades with minimal refurbishment or processing.
• Re-purpose of individual materials constituents of the blades (and manufacturing waste).
• Recycling the blade and glass fibre textiles scraps from the wind blade manufacturing in cement/clinker co-processing as an alternative fuel.

Objectives

At present, windmill blade waste is mostly used in low-grade applications or incinerated and landfilled. However, polymer composite waste has value due to mineral and polymeric fibres (e.g. glass, carbon, aramid), indicating that they could be cost-effective in producing cementitious materials for high-end applications. The main objective of this work package is to develop cementitious and asphalt products according to the type of waste (i.e. composition, organic contamination, homogeneity) that can be recovered and treated from windmill blades and other composites. So far, there is a lack of information about the properties of concrete incorporating such materials. Therefore, the first task will be to study and list the many different types of waste treated in WP2, in terms of their physical and chemical properties. Secondly, to prepare a wide range of non-structural concrete and asphalt mixtures incorporating these materials, according to the building codes and standards. Different mix-design will be created to fulfill the requirement of different industrial products. Another important aspect of assessing is the environmental impact of these by-products since all concrete and asphalt mixtures constituents need to comply with the legislation. Therefore, the leaching of contaminants needs to be studied and its potential effect on cement chemistry (e.g. hydration) and properties (e.g. mechanical strength, shrinkage…). Finally, the end-of-life of the new products need to be assessed to assure the circularity of these new solutions.

Specific objectives are:

• Reviewing the potential applications according to the raw material (i.e. waste generated and characterised in WP 1 and 2) and the building codes and standards.
• Development of different mix-designs on a laboratory scale and characterisation (i.e. mechanical, physical, durability, circularity) of these building materials.
• Upscaling the process to guarantee the manufacture of these construction materials.
• Life cycle assessment focusing on the products.

BLADES2BUILD project consists of 14 partners coordinated by the Technical University of Denmark – DTU (DTU Sustain, Dr. Ana Teresa Lima).

In the project, ACCIONA will lead all the construction materials upscaling and process development activities, while partner HOLCIM will be responsible for the testing and scalability of circularity frameworks and will support the development of Circular Construction products.

LM Wind Power and GE RENEWABLE ENERGY will bring expertise on circularity, wind park management and will support the scaling up of circular solutions for decommissioned blades and blade manufacturing waste.

Partners NTUA,TUE and RWTH will focus on lab-scale testing and characterization tasks and recycling technologies, while ELDAN and RWTH will deal with composites processing and RWTH will also deal with the environmental impact of new developed building materials from wind blade waste.

RENAO will ensure in Blades2Build the overall coordination for preparing and assessing the demonstration phase while partner PZGR will be responsible for the construction, commissioning, and operation of a recycling/valorization plant, supported by PZE, whilst ENDESA will play the key role of the GO/NO-GO decision.

Lastly, the RWTH team will assess environmental impacts and economic viability at product and plant levels, and GCS will be leading all efforts related to communication, dissemination and exploitation, and the development of the Knowledge-Hub.