Specialists have fostered another synthetic cycle that isn’t restricted to wind turbine sharp edges yet chips away at various purported fiber-built epoxy composites, including a few materials that are supported with particularly exorbitant carbon strands.
Due to their light weight and long durability, these reinforced composites are used for load-bearing structures in the wind turbine, aerospace, automotive, and space industries. This process could help establish a possible circular economy.
Wind turbine blade durability is a challenge for the environment because they are built to last. Due to their extremely difficult breakdown, wind turbine blades typically end up in landfills when they are retired.
Assuming that no arrangement is found, we will have collected 43 million tons of wind turbine edge squander worldwide by 2050.
“However, we see it as a significant breakthrough for the development of long-lasting technologies that can help epoxy-based materials achieve a circular economy.”
Troels Skrydstrup, one of the lead authors of the study.
The process that has just been discovered is a proof-of-concept for a recycling strategy that can be used on the vast majority of wind turbine blades that are currently in production as well as other materials made of epoxy.
Aarhus University and the Danish Technological Institute have submitted a patent application for the method, and the results were recently published in Nature.
In particular, the researchers have demonstrated that they can separate the epoxy matrix, release bisphenol A (BPA), one of the original building blocks of the epoxy polymer, and release fully intact glass fibers in a single process by utilizing a ruthenium-based catalyst and the solvents isopropanol and toluene.
The catalytic system is not efficient enough for industrial use, and ruthenium is a rare and expensive metal, so the method is not yet immediately scalable. As a result, researchers from Aarhus University are extending their efforts to enhance this approach.
“By and by, we see it as a critical forward leap for the improvement of sturdy innovations that can make a round economy for epoxy-based materials.” According to Troels Skrydstrup, one of the study’s lead authors, “This is the first publication of a chemical process that can selectively disassemble an epoxy composite and isolate one of the most important building blocks of the epoxy polymer as well as the glass or carbon fibers without damaging the latter in the process.”
Troels Skrydstrup is a professor at Aarhus University’s Interdisciplinary Nanoscience Center (iNANO) and the Department of Chemistry.
More information: Troels Skrydstrup et al, Catalytic disconnection of C–O bonds in epoxy resins and composites, Nature (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-023-05944-6
