Blades being chopped for transport. | Global Cement Magazine
It’s the new alternative fuel — decommissioned turbines. There are 21,000 wind turbines in Germany alone at the moment. With 15,000 tons a year of old blades expected to be dumped by 2019, it’s a real problem to get rid of them. The EU says they can’t be dumped in landfill. Here’s the perfect solution. Chop them, shred them, then deliver the fibreglass reinforced plastic to the local cement plant. The resins hold 15MJ per kilo. “One tonne of resin saves 600 kg of coal at the cement plant!”
It’s a win-win all round. Residents get rid of the bird chopping towers, the cement plant gets energy, and the windmills may, possibly for the first time, save some CO2 for the Greens. What’s not to like?
Indeed this is recycling you can like. The raw materials in old blades can even be used in the cement too.
Wind Turbines make good alternative fuels for cement production.
Global Cement Magazine Sept 2014 page 10
Since 2009 Zajons has been working with Holcim’s Geocycle division to process and recycle wind turbine blades for use as an alternative fuel and raw material in the cement industry. The Cross-Flow Shredder has been customised to effect 100% recy cling of fibreglass-reinforced wind turbine blades.
The huge number of new wind farms is one catalyst for this, coupled with the fact that decommissioned wind turbine blades can no longer be sent to landfill. This has been prohibited in Germany since 2005 on the back of EU regulations. Conventional low-temperature waste incineration is not an option as melted glass fibres would cause the blockages in the system. A wind turbine has a maximum life-span of 20 years.
“By 2019 we expect decommissioned wind turbine blades to exceed 15,000t/yr,” said Lempke. “There are major technical issues involved in recycling these huge blades, the first being transporting the blades to the reprocessing plant. We saw the blades into transport-friendly lengths of around 10m on-site at the wind farm and use a special liquid to minimise dust, thus preventing site contamination.” Sawing the blades into manageable lengths on-site significantly reduces transportation costs (Figure 4). Once at the reprocessing plant, the metal components are removed and the blades are sawn into smaller pieces.
Suction, filter and watering technologies largely prevent dust production. The blade is ground in a Cross-Flow Shredder. The resulting material, which is primarily composed of fibreglass reinforced plastic, is homogenised and delivered to a nearby cement plant. The calorific value of the resins (around 15MJ/kg) is harnessed in the cement calciner and is used to thermally degrade the lime. One tonne of resin replaces 600kg of coal at the cement plant.
Even better, the silicon dioxide in the fibreglass can be used instead of sand:
Ash constitutes >50% of the wind turbine blade, which is mixed with the raw meal in the calciner. This is where an additional benefit comes into play. The ash contains SiO 2 from the fibreglass, which is used in place of sand in the raw material mix. In addition to wind turbine blades, other fibreglass materials can also be used once ground. Thus, valuable raw materials can be substituted and supply conserved.
Using this method, more than 1000 wind turbine blades have been processed into homogeneous refuse derived fuel (RDF) for cement kilns. Working closely with partners like Holcim has enabled Zajons to develop innovative solutions for the manufacture of alternative raw materials for cement and incineration feedstocks, thereby generating significant added value for its cement industry customers.
www.globalcement.com/pdf/eGCSept2014ns.pdf
h/t to Cementafriend 🙂
Their future status is monumental, that is, they are monuments to such extravagant levels of input of energy and material consumption in their construction that they were never economically sustainable.
As they can’t go to land-fill, they have “toxic-waste equivalent” categorisation.
Hey, there could be a whole new business expansion opportunity for asbestos removalists in puffed-out wind turbine removal.
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Yes,asbestos and asbestos-cement products can be safely disposed of in cement kilns. It has been done in a cement plant in Belgium which is fired entirely by alternative (waste) fuels (some of which have a positive cost ie they are paid to use the fuel).
In Europe, recycled fuels eg used tyres, wood waste, sawdust, sorted garbage etc does not count for CO2 emission. There are incinerators producing electricity but cement kilns are better at disposal because a) the burning temperatures are higher (1600C product and upto 3000C flame temperatures) b) the ash (including metal oxides) is absorbed into the product and c) the lime in the system absorbs SO2 and Chlorides.
One problem though for Australia, soon all the cement will be imported. It has been announced that the clinker plant in Perth will be closed. There is no clinker plant now in Victoria. New import terminal is being built in Port Kembla. There are already terminals in Melbourne, Sydney, Newcastle, Brisbane and Cairns. Same thing is happening in NZ with 3 import terminals being built.
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A monument to the monumental stupidity of the climate change agenda. !
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Has anyone run the numbers as to what happens when a Cat3+ hurricane plows into one of these fields? How far will broken blades travel? Will the towers stand? It’s just a matter of time before a tornado wipes out a land based field, or a hurricane does likewise at sea.
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James,
inside those nacelles on top of each tower is an intricate mix of things, not just the Constant Speed Drive (glorified gearbox) and the generator.
There’s sensing equipment for the operational wind speed working parameters, equipment to turn the whole nacelle (and that could be anything up to 7 tons or more) into the prevailing breeze, and also equipment to feather the blades in high winds, all of this requiring electric motors to move those things, so while I’m not sure they would withstand super high winds, their design is such that in high winds the blades are locked and feathered.
Now, as you may guess with all this complexity in those nacelles, each of those would consume some of the power actually being generated while the unit is working, and conversely, they need to be operational when there is no wind, so they can be ready to start working, especially those electric motors, hence, each nacelle would be drawing power from an outside source while they are NOT working, if you can see that point.
Tony.
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Hands up everyone that wants to work in, or live near, a fibreglass shredding plant…
In my drive around France a couple days ago I saw a blade on a delivery truck. I can see why transporting them is a pain. Also saw several fluffy cloud producing nuke plants. Now there’s real energy production, and I’d much rather live near them than a field of windmills.
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All one can say is… BEEEE-YOOTI-FUL ! 🙂
Now, what to do with all that waste concrete in the foundations !
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Use it for a base on the new roads we can afford to build as public funds aren’t being wasted on environmental F%$#ing vandalism like this.
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I personally turned down two lucrative jobs to put these things up but would jump at the chance to tear them down, hell I’d probably do it for free!
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Tear them down? Been working on a hydrochloric compound utilising nano-technology and an extremely hot cup of tea.
Would vaporise the flicking bird munchers in a flick!
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scaper
If I was to try this method, do I drink it or apply it onto something?
Seems it’s a good solution for wind towers, either way.
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A very interesting article. I wonder what determines whether or not a blade is scrapped. The presence of stress cracks, maybe? Or simply a ‘destroy by’ date to avoid failures?
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You will not see this story on the ABC!
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But Pattoh you are very likely to see this story discussed by the likes of Andrew Bolt, Christopher Booker and James Delingpole. The two latter English gents both are revolted by these ugly giant wind turbines spreading around the English countryside (and offshore) like a cancer.
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“What we will have, within a decade or two, is a clear up job that’ll make Chernobyl look like a training day. As the vast arrays of panels age, they’ll crack and contaminate the topsoil with poisonous chemical particles.”
http://thepointman.wordpress.com/2012/04/13/the-sun-is-setting-on-solar-power-the-moneys-gone-and-nobodys-asking-any-questions/
Windmills, like solar panels, are so full of environmentally lethal substances, they poison the Earth they were supposed to save. It reminds me of that Vietnam era comment – “We had to destroy the village to save it.”
Pointman
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My, how the costs all add up for these, umm, cheap wind plants.
Say we have a wind plant of 400MW, so, around 160 towers, and it is due for destruction, after its 20 year life span, and notice how now there’s an admission that they will barely manage 20 years, let alone the claimed 25 years.
Forget the 480 huge blades that they will do what they do to them. Forget getting rid of 160 of those huge 100 metre tall concrete towers. There’s a 70 ton nacelle on top of each tower. There’s 160 generators, now clapped out, which have to be delicately removed with monster cranes, trucked away for careful destruction, considering all the rare earths in them, all of that probably for recycling as well.
Please don’t tell me that’s going to be cheap, and please don’t try and say all that is not an added cost for wind power.
Altruism is a word which just does not come to mind here.
A 400MW wind
farmplant, which over its whole 20 year life span life has generated the power delivered from Bayswater in ….. wait for it ….. ONE YEAR.Tony.
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Tony
I like your ongoing work on this site.
The adage “socialism masquerading as environmentalism” comes little closer to the truth than in global wind power cultism.
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Tony
I wish you would stop putting renewables down all the time. Don’t you know renewables now produce 22 percent of the worlds electricity.
sarc off:
Bob
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Hint.
China Hydro.
Tony.
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And don’t forget the use of non polluting biofuels Britain now burns in place of coal.
sarc off again,
P:S Viv Forbes says 8% not 22%, if you include Hydro, and only 2% for wood waste and cow dung. Wind and solar contribute so little, they might as well not exist. See the chart at the bottom of the article.
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God, how depressing.
How much money did governments spend on a something that makes such an impact on power generation that “contribute so little, might as well not exist”.
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This is just taking the old levelised lifecycle cost comparison to the next level isn’t it?
So to really compare costs of wind/nuke/solar/coal you have to include the decommissioning and materials recycling costs at the end of the plant design lifetime.
As you imply, the wind plant has been scrapped twice before the coal plant even gets wrinkles.
With nuclear it’s not quite so straightforward as, even without the occasional accidents to which Sillyfilly refers, disposing of a perfectly reputable nuclear power station safely takes nearly half as long as building one and the cost is also quite steep. Ballpark figures on disposal seem to be up to $1 million per MWe of capacity. That’s nearly half the construction cost in some cases. Still, you wouldn’t want to do it on the cheap.
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20 years! Tony, you’re an optimist!
It will end up being a lot less than that! Gearbox life is down to 5 years!. At UKP300,000 per replacement gearbox, that means at least three replacement boxes per turbine over that 20 year period.
Factor in inflation, and gearbox servicing alone will cost UKP1.3 million per turbine over that 20 year `life span.’
These bird-shredders will end up costing considerably more than they can possibly save.
The best strategy for making … large … savings is to stop any further investment in `alternatives’ and spend the clean-up money now. On cleaning up.
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Why is it that so many things the Greens want introduced, to replace what works, can’t be recycled, can’t be disposed of easily, do little to achieve the desired aims etc? Fluorescent lighting is just one example, as well as plastic bags. Has there ever been a Green that has actually sat down and thought about the unintended consequences of their actions, before embarking on a ‘save the world’ quest?
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No!
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The consequences are not unintended. They intend the total destruction of modern civilization. It doesn’t matter to them that it costs so much. The excessively high cost is part of their plan.
When someone keeps doing and getting results that are counter to what he says he expects, he intends to get the results he gets and is lying to both himself and you about it. Either that or he is insane. More likely it is both. Yet we keep submitting to this insanity and simply complain.
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I certainly accept that the most radical of Greens really do want to return humanity back to the Stone Age. That said, Green ideas must be implemented by others, those with the power/ability to do so and who are not usually Greens. Yet there appears to be a continual ignorance or lack of consideration of these unintended consequences. What causes intelligent people (I’m not referring to the Greens) to not look deeper when it comes to such issues?
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Turnedoutnice then……………:o)
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The blades are not just polyester resin and fibreglass. Depending on their design they may include thermoplastic cloth (with or without hollow glass spheres trapped in the weave), end grain balsa wood, polyurethane foam and possibly polyimide fibres. Also some may use epoxy resin for greater strength. They will all either burn or melt at cement making temperatures, but there is the risk of some nitrogen oxides being generated. They would all react with the cement but some greenie is bound to try and use this as another scare.
Incidentally, ground up fibreglass reinforced polyester has been used as a filler in other polyester using processes. When fibreglass car bodies looked likely there was a deal of effort expended so that old car bodies could be ground up and used in the new bodies. Never really economic.
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Today in the UK, a calm, beautiful early autumn day, electricity demand is a modest 37.67GW. Wind is producing HALF A GIGAWATT – or something like one fourteenth of installed capacity, on and offshore. Or 1.38% of demand.
Now, seeing as how demand in the winter can easily be 60GW, with the same wind conditions wind would be producing 0.86% of demand.
What a ‘monumental’ waste of materials, labour and engineering expertise….
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sherloc1
This is a great actual example of the folly of reliance on wind power.
Around many a monument there is often held a ceremony involving a period of solemn silence.
How fitting if it became tradition every winter to hold one 23.7 hour “no electric power” memorial period within 50 kilometres of all wind farm monuments.
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You’ll enjoy this from the Daily Mail, then.
Yep. Wind farms were paid UKP8.7million to switch OFF their turbines last month, because they generated too much electricity!
You can’t make this stuff up! 🙂
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certainly an alternative fuel.
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Why not have the old blades homoginised ?? – this works well in getting rid of awkward temperatures.
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O/T UPDATE
A lesson in denial.
Who remembers the saga called ‘Ship of Fools’?
When a boat load of neurotic, Catastrophic Global Warming believers were stuck in ice in the Antarctic in the middle of summer attempting to document the melting ice as predicted by their 97% consensus climate science models.
Gilligan, the professor, Marayanne, The BoM. They were all there:
“Greens senator-elect Janet Rice, who went out on the second trip to the Hodgeman’s just after 12.30pm, said she was aware of a “weather window” but did not know there was a set time allowed in the field.” http://www.smh.com.au/interactive/2014/stuck-in-the-ice/
> Greens senator-elect Janet Rice has Just delivered her maiden speech to the Australian Senate.
Some highlights:
Climate change drove me to politics: Janet Rice
“I completed my science degree, and had to act on my scientific knowledge.
The Great Barrier Reef will be but a memory.
And Antarctica – where I visited last summer – will be irretrievably on its way to being ice free . Good bye gorgeous Adelie penguins.”
edited transcript: http://www.abc.net.au/environment/articles/2014/08/27/4075555.htm
“The 60 kilometres of sea ice which had impacting on us getting to Cape Denison was having a more life and death impact on them, as the parent birds struggled to travel from the colony across the ice to open water.” http://www.janetrice.com.au/?e=96
. . .
And there ends today’s lesson.
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Missing link.
Climate change drove me to politics: Janet Rice
http://www.abc.net.au/environment/articles/2014/08/27/4075555.htm
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Our new Greens Senator-Elect, Janet Rice, says:
“And Antarctica – where I visited last summer – will be irretrievably on its way to being ice free. Good bye gorgeous Adelie penguins.”
Antarctic Sea Ice has set a new record for August, 2014 – What’s your problem, Janet?
http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2014/09/01/antarctic-sea-ice-set-new-record-for-august/
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Maybe we’re on to something here, perhaps they can adapt the process to recycle Chernobyl and Fukushima?
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So, in a nutshell, anything that agrees with left wing greens policy good anything that doesn’t is baad.
I suppose we can expect little less from a neigh sayer.
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Oh come now sillyfilly, surely you’ve got something positive to say about wind power.
Waiting ….. waiting.
Thought so.
Nothing!
Tony.
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What about the direction the blades rotate in ? Isn’t that positive ?
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You are even more silly than I thought.
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Intriguing!
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All I can ask, is
Gees , but are you always this stupid.?
Answer
Yes, you are, ALWAYS !!
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Salvation may be on its way. A new company in the US may have the answer. It uses the spent fuel to generate more electricity, cleaning up the waste at the same time.
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Perhaps we could push the engineering on turbines to a 30 year life and only site them at optimal locations.
One my fathers points was that the best areas e.g. The Hebrides of Scotland, were miles from population centres so there would be significant transmission losses. His study recommended wind turbines coupled with pump storage to provide power to remote areas with low populations to save the cost of high tension grid access. His study into costs placed wind at 4 to 5X that of nuclear.
I’ve no objection to a few wind turbines but they must produce useful electricity when we need it and at a rate we can afford. I always appreciate Tony’s numbers in these matters.
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Good JPAK,
Could wind turbines actually work in optimal locations, e.g. west coast of Tasmania?
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The problem is the (wind speed)^3 power output. To control the surges without using as much fossil fuel as you save, perhaps more, you must have hydro-electric power, either natural or pump storage, able to sink the surges by shutting the gate valve at the head of the penstock. It’s simple physics.
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I have a vision of a bunch of big, tough German men in plaid shirts heading for the hills at dawn, saws in hand saying:
We’re going to chop down turbines… according to Google translate.
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Oh, I’m a windmilljack and I’m OK ! 🙂
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The table below are laboriously rewritten by hand ; Sigh! Oh for an image capability!
There is a fair amount of other information and tables available as well at the below site.
It can be seen that building materials and land use per GW/hr/ yr generated for wind in particular. solar thermal plus storage is going nowhere after the US debacle with the very unfortunate and stomach churning burning destruction of birds plus pilots being dazzled by the glare of the mirrors from tens of kilometres away, which leaves wind turbines and their 159 tonnes of concrete and 43 tonnes of steel for each GWhr per year of energy production.
Coal plants have not been included in that building materials use table for some unknown reason.
Nor has off shore turbines been included in the building materials used table.
The off shore turbines which cost about twice as much per GW name plate capacity to build compared to land based turbines probably use a great deal more steel and concrete than the on-shore turbines.
Although off shore turbines are falling out of fashion as the connection to the land grid costs plus maintenance costs including impact erosion of blades from salt loaded air are so high.
Plus now the shipping companies are getting very up tight as the turbine scammers are starting to seek permits to encroach onto major European shipping lanes in the shallow ocean outlets in northern Europe.
In the end, for our 24 hours a day, seven days a week, fifty two weeks of the year civilisation to be forced to go back to a 3000 year old intermittent, unpredictable, very low energy production per land area, high material use per generation output, the wind energy source with 3000 years of technology behind which was promptly abandoned at the very first oppurtunity by the entrepreneurial industrialists of the British Industrial Revolution 250 years ago when viable steam power first became available, to go back to wind energy and expect it to do what it could not do 250 years ago and that after 3000 years of development is beyond stupid to even consider such a course.
But then stupidity is one of the hall marks of the green rabble and a fair proportion of the climate science fraternity who are also promoting this wind stupidity without ever having even had a realistic look at just how effective wind and 8 hours of solar a day, if your’e lucky, would be as a prime power source for our 24 hours a day civilisation.
Says a lot about the standards of science those scientists who promote wind and solar are probably achieving in science research if they can’t figure out how impotent and stupid it would be to try and use wind and solar only to generate the power needed to run our civilisation.
.
To re-empathise the point made below; the tables below are based on the energy actually being generated by that particular type of generator NOT the name plate capacity of that generator system as is used in most other such analysis, an example of which I have just been reading.
The following selected quotes and tables are taken from The Breakthrough blog site in a post dated 30th Sept 2013.
Nuclear Has One of the Smallest Footprints
Land Footprint
Advocates of a particular generating technology will often use land use as an argument against competing technologies. With some technologies, like wind, there is the risk of apples-and-oranges comparisons in terms of land use. Do you count the whole area of the wind farm in the calculation or just the footprint of the wind turbine plus access roads? The difference between the two can be a factor of 50.
To avoid apple and orange mix-ups, the table below identifies land use per GWh per year to ensure a like comparison between the technologies.
Energy source ———Land use /m2/GWh’s/yr—————comments
‘
Geothermal——————900————————Flash plant inc wells & pipes
Wind – onshore———–1100 ———————–Turbine footprint plus access only
Nuclear————————1200————————Plant site including cooling water
Solar . Thermal ———-3200————————Desert based — 6 hours storage
Coal [ strip mining ]—–5700———————–Including mining site
Solar PV———————-7500————————Solar farm with dedicated land
Hydro [ reservoir ]——-200,000 ——————100 m head – 20 metre depth
Bio mass———————460,000——————–Tree area with 20 year fuel supply
_______________________________
Building Materials Footprint
Nuclear power is often criticized as a huge consumer of building materials. This is true if you just look at the materials used to build a power station without considering the amount of energy the power station generates over its life. As such, building materials are often quoted in tonnes per MW (power plant size) rather than tonnes per MWh (the power plant’s energy generation). This can mislead us into thinking that nuclear power uses more resources than solar panels, when the opposite is true.
The table below shows the concrete and steel used in some plant constructions expressed as tonnes per GWh per year. The capacity factors shown are the ones used in the referenced reports. Of these plants, nuclear power uses the least amount of concrete and steel per unit of energy generated in one year. If the full lifetime of the plants had been considered, then the nuclear plant’s use of concrete and steel would be even less because nuclear plants have some of the longest lifespans. Compared to a nuclear plant’s lifespan of 40 years, for instance, a solar panel may last less than 20 years.
A true comparison could significantly increase the materials required for the solar plant.
‘
Material tonnes /GWh’s / yr————Capacity factor ——–Concrete ———Steel
‘
Nuclear———————————————–85%————————43 —————–8
Solar PV farm————————————-20%————————43—————-10
Wind ; Onshore ———————————30%————————159—————43
Solar – thermal
inc 7.5 hours storage————————–44%————————338—————105
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So the new motto is “kill a bird chopper – save the planet”? 😉
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Don’t forget the Ivanpah Fried Chicken plant.
Who’d have guessed that insect-eating birds would be attracted to the insects drawn by the bright light? Researchers without a “light bulb moment”.
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I can’t resist linking to a company I have worked for as a small particles buster.
May the force be with you.
http://www.flsmidth.com/en-US/Industries/Cement
http://www.flsmidth.com/en-US/Industries/Cement/Products/Pyroprocessing/Hotdisc/Hotdisc
Funny that Vestas products can be fuel in the FLSmidth cement ovens.
Both are danish companies. One very old, one rather new.
There are great products coming from Scandinavia.
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Recomputed for constant capacity factor:
Material tonnes /GWh’s / yr————Capacity factor ——–Concrete ———Steel
Nuclear———————————————–85%————————43 —————–8
Solar PV farm————————————-85%————————183—————-43
Wind ; Onshore ———————————85%————————442—————122
Solar – thermal
inc 7.5 hours storage————————–85%————————653—————203
Obviously, based upon the green’s hidden intent, Solar-thermal materials use is much to be desired because it is wildly inefficient by a factor of almost 17 times that of Nuclear. Nuclear is to be prohibited because it actually works and has a minimal materials cost. How else can you better destroy technological civilization except by burdening it with massively inefficient use of materials and the energy used to produce the materials?
The use of solar-thermal energy sets in play a rapidly downward spiral even if it weren’t intermittent. The cost of energy to produce the massive materials used increases as the proportionate amount of solar-thermal energy is produced. Thus the costs increase without end. It is an interesting positive feedback effect that drives the economy into a totally unsustainable position and guaranteeing its collapse.
When the economy collapses so does the civilization. Which, by the way, was and still is the goal of the greens. They are ALL Latter Day Luddites without a morally or socially redeeming quality in the bunch. They haven’t the courage to lead by example and become extinct first. They know that the rest of us can get along quite nicely without them. That is a thought they can’t tolerate. We must be made to *suffer* on our way out while they are to exist at our expense until the end.
“But…but..but the solar energy is free.” Technically speaking all energy is free. It is the cost of converting and distributing the original energy as a useful form that is expensive. It is THAT cost that must be minimized if man is going to live and thrive. That the original energy (untapped, unusable, and unused) is free is a totally irrelevant and misleading fact.
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I always thought a few should be left standing as an admonishment to fools that they should be slower to decide to jump off the next cliff they see.
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As monuments to monumental folly, as it were ?
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No, no, no, no, no, I just read about Robyn “100 metres” Williams’ Science Show featuring Naomi Oreskes, we are going to need those incredible energy producing giants to power our airconditioners if we are to survive the predicted heat-wave induced extinction of all life in Australia (and apparently Africa and all but a few remote mountain settlements probably managed by Williams and funded by the ABC)including puppies and kittens… we’re screwed.
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Hooray!
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Jo
Have you seen this? A very interesting critique of the ‘97% of scientists agree’ nonsense.
http://www.joseduarte.com/blog
“Cooking stove use, housing associations, white males, and the 97%
The Cook et al. (2003) 97% paper included a bunch of psychology studies, marketing papers, and surveys of the general public as scientific endorsement of anthropgenic climate change”
—-
REPLY: Thanks, actually someone did send me that, I now realize it was by Duarte. Useful to know. Ta! – Jo
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Just perfect!
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They should burn all the renewable, green and sustainable contracts as well. Lots of energy in paper covered in nonsense.
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15,000 tons. About the same weight as the Admiral Graf Spee, which was also scuttled by the owners before its planned retirement.
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[…] Finally, a way to get energy from Wind Turbines: burn them, make cement! […]
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