Researchers involved in the REWIND project are developing technologies to recover composite materials from end-of-life wind turbine systems and convert them into new products, with the aim of reducing the amount of wind turbine blade waste sent to landfills or incineration.
The project, titled “Efficient Decommissioning, Repurposing and Recycling to increase the Circularity of End-of-Life Wind Energy Systems,” brings together research and industry partners to establish processes for dismantling, recovering, and reusing composite materials from retired wind turbine blades.
As part of the project, the consortium has developed a predictive model capable of forecasting the mechanical behavior of recovered materials with more than 90% accuracy. The partners say this could help determine where recycled composite materials can meet the performance requirements of demanding applications, including electric vehicle components and insulation materials.
At the German Institutes of Textile and Fiber Research (DITF), researchers are converting recovered glass and carbon fibers into yarns and textile reinforcements intended for new components and wind turbine repair applications. The recycled fibers are first assessed to determine their condition and identify suitable processing routes.
One development pathway focuses on converting recycled glass fibers into higher-value textile reinforcements. The recovered fibers undergo opening and carding before being spun into yarn and subsequently converted into fabrics with unidirectional or bidirectional reinforcement architectures.
One of the project's milestones is a recycled glass fiber/polyamide-6 yarn containing approximately 40% fiber by volume. The material is intended for thermoplastic composite applications, including potential structural components in automotive engineering.
Researchers have also produced yarn containing as much as 98% recycled glass fibers. The yarn was subsequently used to manufacture a unidirectional woven fabric, demonstrating that recycled glass fibers can be arranged into specifically oriented reinforcement structures designed to accommodate different mechanical loading conditions.
A second development route focuses on long-fiber delamination (LFD) tapes, which are obtained directly from decommissioned wind turbine blades. These tapes represent a new type of semi-finished textile material made from fully cured glass-fiber-reinforced plastic (GFRP) recovered from blades.
The research team is currently evaluating whether these recycled LFD tapes can be converted into unidirectional fabrics suitable for use as high-performance reinforcement in new fiber-reinforced composite structures.
The developments under REWIND highlight a potential pathway for moving wind turbine blade recycling beyond waste treatment toward material recovery and high-value reuse. By transforming recovered glass fibers and GFRP into yarns, fabrics, and other reinforcement formats, the project is working toward a more circular supply chain for composite materials while creating opportunities for their use in new wind energy, automotive, and industrial applications.
Source: DIFT | Press Release
