Numlock News: April 28, 2022 • Blades, Predatory Crabs, Atom Smasher
www.numlock.com
By Walt Hickey While You Were Burning Coal, I Studied The Blade Last year, 12,000 wind turbine blades were scrapped around the world, and the number is expected to be at least 28,000 per year by 2030. The good news is many of the blades are being replaced before the end of their 20- to 30-year usable life only in order to get increasingly efficient blades on turbines, but still that’s a lot of waste that can add up. Instead of just landfilling them, though, the old fiberglass blades can be sent to cement factories, where they can be burned in kilns to make clinker for cement. Burning the blades has an emissions reduction of 27 percent compared to landfilling the blades and burning coal instead, but it is a bit more expensive as it’s about 20 percent to 30 percent pricier to get them to a cement plant than it is to dump them in a landfill, though as cement makers are pressured to cut carbon it could get cheaper.
Numlock News: April 28, 2022 • Blades, Predatory Crabs, Atom Smasher
Numlock News: April 28, 2022 • Blades…
Numlock News: April 28, 2022 • Blades, Predatory Crabs, Atom Smasher
By Walt Hickey While You Were Burning Coal, I Studied The Blade Last year, 12,000 wind turbine blades were scrapped around the world, and the number is expected to be at least 28,000 per year by 2030. The good news is many of the blades are being replaced before the end of their 20- to 30-year usable life only in order to get increasingly efficient blades on turbines, but still that’s a lot of waste that can add up. Instead of just landfilling them, though, the old fiberglass blades can be sent to cement factories, where they can be burned in kilns to make clinker for cement. Burning the blades has an emissions reduction of 27 percent compared to landfilling the blades and burning coal instead, but it is a bit more expensive as it’s about 20 percent to 30 percent pricier to get them to a cement plant than it is to dump them in a landfill, though as cement makers are pressured to cut carbon it could get cheaper.