Chemical recycling of End-of-Life wind turbine blades

This report proposes an effective, environmentally-benign, small molecule-assisted, dynamic reaction approach for recycling waste wind turbine blades. At temperatures below 200 °C, thermoset ester-containing resins in waste wind turbine blades and carbon fiber composites were efficiently dissolved via a transesterification reaction. The obtained glass and carbon fiber materials were easily separated from the product solution. Experimental findings demonstrated that this method could recycle a wide range of genuine carbon and glass fiber resin composites, including wind turbine blades constructed from epoxy-anhydride and polyester resin substrates,