Old wind turbine blades could be turned into sweets, suggests a new study.
Scientists have made a new material designed to build wind turbine blades that can be recycled into numerous objects and even edible sweets.
Dr John Dorgan and his team at Michigan State University in the US combined glass fibres with a plant-derived and a synthetic polymer to create the new material.
The new blades can be recycled into more blades, or into other materials that can be used to make countertops, sinks, car taillights, laptop covers, diapers and gummy bears.
What they create all depends on how the scientists manipulate the material.
By using an alkaline solution, the new material, a composite resin, can be transformed into sweets and sports drinks.
Dr Dorgan said: ‘We recovered food-grade potassium lactate and used it to make gummy bear candies.’
He added: ‘Which I ate.’
Eating the sugary delicacy himself shows Dorgan’s confidence in their safety as well as their tastiness.
He said: ‘A carbon atom derived from a plant, like corn or grass, is no different from a carbon atom that came from a fossil fuel.
‘It’s all part of the global carbon cycle, and we’ve shown that we can go from biomass in the field to durable plastic materials and back to foodstuffs.’
With some wind turbines reaching the length of half a football field, that could be a lot of gummy bears.
But the possibility of this new material doesn’t stop there. As well as making sweets, an alkaline solution can be used to make windows and car taillights, and by mixing the material with different minerals they can make stone, which can be used to make counter tops and sinks.
Dr Dorgan said: ‘We’ve recently made a bathroom sink with the cultured stone, so we know it works.’
While some companies have found ways to recycle fiberglass blades, they normally end up in landfill when they reach the end of their shelf life.
Experts believe this situation could worsen, as blades are constantly being replaced and thrown away.
Dr Dorgan said: ‘Larger wind turbine blades are more efficient, so companies keep making bigger and bigger ones.
‘Often, wind farms will actually replace the turbine blades before the end of service life because the farms can generate more electricity with bigger blades.’
This is why Dr Dorgan’s team’s success could make a real difference in the sustainability of wind turbines.
Dr Dorgan said: ‘The beauty of our resin system is that at the end of its use cycle, we can dissolve it, and that releases it from whatever matrix it’s in so that it can be used over and over again in an infinite loop.’
The team, who presented their findings at a meeting of the American Chemical Society in Chicago, now aim to make some medium sized blades to put their findings to the test.
The team though have an issue. There is a limited supply of the bioplastic they need.
Dr Dorgan added: ‘The current limitation is that there’s not enough bioplastic that we’re using to satisfy this market, so there needs to be considerable production volume brought online if we’re going to actually start making wind turbines out of these materials.’
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