JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #108 - October 2016 - 31

WIND ENERGY
recycling

A new generation of wind turbine blades
The goal of the four-to-five-year Effiwind project launched in March
2014 is to develop a new generation of wind turbine blades that are
made of recyclable thermoplastic acrylic polymer materials.

T

he project, worth a total €10.6
million, is sponsored by the
French Environment and Energy
Management Agency (ADEME) and the
Nouvelle-Aquitaine Regional Council.
It mobilizes a twelve-partner industrial
consortium that includes Arkema, Canoe,
Plastinov, Epsilon Composite, AEC
Polymers, Valorem, Tensyl, Chomarat, and
Bernard & Bonnefond.
The context
Thermoset polymer composites are the
materials currently used to make wind
turbine blades. These materials have
proved to be technologically mature
and easy to work with during the manufacturing steps, with highly fluid resin
that adheres well to the composite's
reinforcement fibres. Their mechanical
performance, however, is not the best
(especially for fatigue), and recycling
these materials is expensive.
Clear-cut objectives
The Effiwind project should enable the
use of thermoplastic acrylic polymer
composites in the manufacture of very
large parts like blades and nacelle covers for offshore wind turbines. This will
be a major technological innovation for
the wind energy sector, one that could
reduce both weight and manufacturing costs (no need for a cure cycle) and

enable recycling. During the project, a
set of reinforced acrylic thermoplastic
blades will be manufactured and tested on a wind turbine that is already in
operation.

Germanischer Lloyd (GL). Three blades
are scheduled to be finished by the end
of 2016, for installation on a wind turbine in Brittany's Plougras test site in
the Côtes d'Armor region.

In concrete terms, Effiwind has three
objectives:
- manufacture 25-metre-long blades that are
longer than standard ones (23 metres), but
which weigh the same, thanks to the use of
a recyclable acrylic resin along with pultruded carbon fibre,
- incorporate pultruded carbon fibre to
serve as the blade's "backbone" and help
support mechanical stresses,
- assemble the blade's two half-shells using a
methacrylic adhesive.
The first new-generation wind turbine blade has just been finished in
Plastinov's facilities at Samazan in
southwestern France, with the help of
Canoe to prepare for certification by

Sequence of events
The main steps of the project are as follows:
- develop new material solutions, in this
case acrylic thermoplastic resins, that will
lead to the design of recyclable, repairable
blades, higher mechanical strength, and
lower weight than blades made of standard
materials. Weight reduction is especially
important, since it impacts both performance and cost;
- develop the processes to manufacture the
blades from these materials;
- demonstrate the technical feasibility of this
solution on an operating wind turbine;
- apply the material solutions to the wind
turbine's other plastic components, in particular the nacelles for offshore machines.

Fig. 1:
Three blades are
scheduled to be finished
by the end of 2016

No108 October 2016

/ jec composites magazine

31
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #108 - October 2016
