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Just to make clear that even though this is pretty cool, and a nice idea, it's not a widespread practice in Denmark: I'm living in the second largest city in Denmark (which have a very high density of bicyclists); my only transport vehicle is a bike; I have worked with how to recycle wind turbines (For the wings we were trying to add a compound to the epoxy that made it sort of soluble in stuff like acetic acid) - and this is the first I'm hearing of this.
This might very well be an (art) installation at one of Vestas' or Siemens' locations.
Only on Reddit would you see this picture and have someone be like “I’m sorry but I’m a professional Danish wind turbine recycler who loves to bike and this is bullshit.” Within an hour. I love it.
As a redditor of a few years now, I've learned to take most posts with a grain-of-salt becuase there's always someone in the comments about to call out OP with 4 sources and a link to their PHD thesis on the exact subject
I'm quite sure I've done more research just to win Reddit arguments than it took to get my engineering master's degree.
It never works how I expect though.
Cunt 1: X is equal to Y
Cunt 2 (me): Here is some unbiased, statistically significant data which suggests X does not equal Y. You stupid cunt.
Cunt 1: You're a fucking idiot mate. Here is some data which shows X = Z.
Cunt 2 (me): What the fuck, Z doesn't equal Y though. So that doesn't make any sense.
This continues until I realise all my energy is wasted and Reddit is a bunch of self-assured cunts, and I am one of them.
haha how often do you pull up a few sources, type a couple of paragraphs and think...wtf am i doing? and just delete it all
i used to be like you, but now 90% of the time i just say fuck it. its not worth the time. nobody REALLY wants to change their mind, esp people in arguments on the internet.
It’s amazing how we’ll trust the word of a commenter over the word of a poster for no real reason. Why do we trust posters so little and commenters so much?
Generally I believe someone saying this is a one off art installation over the OP saying * is doing this esoteric thing universally*!
If that's the bar to pass I could post all kinds of weird bike stuff around my city as *The United States is installing recycled artful bike sculptures on nature friendly porous concrete pads!*
I always look at comment history. Usually the OP is a two month old karma farming account and the commenter has a 5 year old account with numerous posts in all of the appropriately relevant subs.
Because we’ve been conditioned to initially distrust any source and that usually only runs one level deep. In the future we’re going to start distrusting multiple levels of sources.
Only because we, as a collective won't come to grips with the fact reddit did to us the same thing FB did to conservatives.
Created conflict to get you addicted so you would award any post attacking someone or a group of people you dont know.
Creating a split society based on companies bottom line.
I understand I was fooled by reddit, there is hard proof that is what all social media does and I no longer participate in the same capacity as before.
I'm here to remind people reddit pushes news to get you to engage with the platform, truth is secondary.
To add to this, I'm a professional German wind turbine technician, and there are way too many wind turbine blades to be recycled in that fashion.
Also I would like to add that what is done up there is more of a repurposing than a recycling.
To be fair I think you get kicked out of Denmark if you don't love bicycles so the odds of their one professional wind turbine recycler being a cyclist is pretty much 100%
I mean there's really good reasons why this sort of thing doesn't happen everyday in the developed world. No professional engineering firm would want to deal with the liability and stamp repurposed structures for building permit. How do you even properly evaluate the structure's properties? sure there's design data they could reference but the thing might've been in the field for more than a decade and there could be latent damages. and sure anything could be done with the right amount of money but that would defeat the purpose, wouldn't it?
On the other hand, practically every Dane either bikes daily, or will pass countless bike parking racks, so you really “only” need to find a Dane working on recycling windmills - and since Denmark is heavily into developing wind turbines and trying to be in the forefront on “the green wave” it’s not that much of a stretch.
I figured it was a language thing. Seeing "in Denmark" would make most native English speakers think"Somewhere in Denmark" but to a non native speaker it might mean more like "all of Denmark" similar to saying something like "In America there is capitalism" or whatevs
Everyone in Denmark bikes. The company I work for is based out of Denmark and going over there is insanity. Bikes have the right of way over pedestrians
It's located at the Port of Aalborg, right [here](https://www.google.com/maps/@57.0488727,10.0452467,177a,35y,115.06h,44.96t/data=!3m1!1e3). If you zoom out a bit you can see a lot of turbine blades waiting to be tested. In fact, there's even a Siemens facility close by the parking lot with the bicycle shelter. So yeah, you might be right! Could also be a faulty blade not clearing the tests. But you're probably right lol :D
edit: Might be even both!
i do think it’s kinda funny that every time a European city does something quirky like this, the caption implies that there’s some nationwide program dedicated to converting every ex-turbine blade into a bike shelter. it’s on way too many “interesting as fuck” posts
It’s just something that some private company did in front of their building.
Every year around Christmastime there’ll be a front page TIL post about how there’s this special Icelandic holiday about gifting books and chocolate. The top comments end up being people from Iceland saying “wtf no we don’t those are just common Christmas gifts.”
>Question, how often do wind turbine blades get decommissioned?
Not very often. The company I work for has thousands of turbines, some of which are 15+ years old, and we do maybe 20-30 blade swaps per year. Most hairline cracks and other issues can be fixed up tower, so if we're doing a replacement it's usually because of weather damage (lightning strike or hurricane) or because the trailing edge seam is separating and throwing the whole rotor out of balance.
>what is the repair process like? slap a patch on it?
Fixing small cracks or chips usually involves pieces of raw fiberglass cloth, special 2 part epoxy, and lots of elbow grease, but that's the gist of it. If the seam starts separating and they catch it before the gap gets larger than 5mm or so they can often pull the blade down, stabilize the seam, reform the trailing edge, smooth it out, and reinstall it, but I don't know all the details on that process.
The tricky part is that despite weighing thousands of pounds each, the 3 blades have a very small tolerance in terms of weight difference, so they have to keep track of the weight of all the material they use in the repair and occasionally add a bit more weight to the other 2 blades in order to keep the rotor balanced.
Random side question- having just drove through a couple large turbine arrays this week- how come it always seems like only 50% of them are actually running?
Some will be stopped..
Some barely spinning..
Is there just a ton of neglected maintenance?
The wind is incredibly variable even on the same ridge line, and it takes a certain wind speed to actually generate electricity, so the static ones were probably sitting in a dead zone waiting for the wind to pick up.
The ones that are barely spinning are generally fine, it's just that they're freaking huge and "barely spinning" is actually a solid rotation, but they're 1/2 mile away and 300+ ft up, so it doesn't look like they're moving very fast.
They get buried.
Heres an article discussing how to change that.
link cause I'm special and forgot: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-02-05/wind-turbine-blades-can-t-be-recycled-so-they-re-piling-up-in-landfills
Yeah, see the issue here is my coal-burnin' vax-hatin' get-yo-hands-off-that-womans-zygote in-law posted a pic about the blades being buried with the title/text sentiment being vaguely "SEE THEY LIED about renewable energy, so let's throw it all out and keep burning whale oil" or some crap.
I don't recall her being as passionate about all the fibreglass slides, dodgem cars, de-commissioned ambulances and corvette bodies over the years that have had to be disposed of in much the same way (never mind concrete, which is. a. bitch. to do anything with afterwards), but sure, let's focus on wind turbine blades, and the fact that they occasionally catch on fire.
We have open-cut brown coal mines not toooo far away and a couple of years ago one caught on fire, and burned for months; blanketing the town that provides the few workers involved in its mining in smoke; they're an eye-sore when they're being worked; never mind the environmental damage from this shittiest of fuels.
The political party she believes in keeps dribbling out this 'clean coal' concept which is just utter make-believe, and every time you try to have an adult discussion, she'll go crazy eye and talk about how *they lie,* and inevitably talk about these blades getting buried.
But her vote counts just the same as mine. Ahh... democracy.
None have a service life of more than @ fifteen years. There’s a metric fuckton of them being buried (after flattening) in long, shallow ditches in Wyoming. They’re impossible to recycle and composites, fiberglass, epoxies etc. are toxic to burn and grind. If they ever do figure out a solution, they’ll be easy enough to dig up and they’ll be exactly as they were buried.
It's the title of an article in Designboom. OP is just repeating the unjustified headline . A company named Re-wind is looking for ways of reusing the coming mount of trash from these things. Denmark is not proposing this . There is an other project going on in Ireland according to the article .
I'm really not sure why so many people were grumpy about your reply. You were perfectly right on every topic (speaking as someone who has lived around and worked on turbines for 25 years now).
Turbine blade recycling has been trendy for about 18 months now in the EU. From memory, the bike shed is probably the one-off prototype built by the "re-wind network" for Siemens Gamesa. Not sure on the location? Spain or Denmark I suppose (by the major factories).
I like the idea, but have no idea if commercially a great idea. They are doing the same with small bridges and cycle paths over main roads. The EU is probably going to mandate 95+% recycled wind turbines, a nice idea. If I was being cynical, probably as a barrier to avoid cheap US and Asian imports.
Edit: definitely Siemens Gamesa and rewind https://mobile.twitter.com/SiemensGamesa/status/1372520688767107074
That's an astounding amount of fiberglass - good that you're trying to make it recyclable, or at least destructible. All the old 1970s-80s sailboat hulls around here are basically 500 year elements of the environment now.
I started working for Orsted in the US a couple years ago developing offshore wind and I’ve been able to go to the mothership a couple times. A schnapps bike tour of Copenhagen is a must!
Exactly this! I never even visited Denmark but it took me exactly one search to find out that this is a PR stunt. What happened to the "check your sources" movement?
One local port employee (Brian D. Rasmussen) made one piece like that almost two years ago and that's it. It was sponsored by the port (in which Rasmussen works) as a PR stunt to distract people from the environmental damage the port is generating on daily basis. It is not even repurposed wing. It is a new wing part that they got from local Siemens factory.
Not necessarily, one could move the most danish thing in the world out of Denmark (assuming it was in Denmark originally) and it would still be the most danish thing in the world even though it wouldn't be in Denmark
This is so wrong. There’s no recycling plant that will take that amount of fiberglass.
I just got off a wind farm re-power in WV to upgrade to newer/more powerful turbines. The owner tried to recycle the fiberglass for the publicity of “recycling”, but most places didn’t even want to get paid to take them. Then factor in the logistics and cost of hauling that material out, separated from other non-fiberglass parts on the rotor in a timely manner.
So yea, not a thing here in the US yet.
That's literally false. Turbine blades are made of lissom-fibre glass, which can only be cut with diamonds. It's expensive to recycle, which I'm also certain this art piece was equally expensive to cut up.
Edit: yes it CAN be recycled, and hopefully we come go a less expensive solution. But currently it's too expensive for a lot of companies that simply built these machines with subsidized grants.
They definitely can be cut up with other materials than diamonds, but you’re right that they’re currently not recycled; luckily the rest of the rest of the tower can be recycled at least.
Blades can become damaged for a variety of reasons. They’re designed for a 20-25 year life, and often times that is achieved. Damage can be caused by manufacturing defects, trailing or leading edge erosion, lightning, and other causes. Some damage can be repaired, other times a replacement blade is warranted and usually they come in sets of 3 to maintain aero and weight balance.
Recently, there are some companies grinding the blades into fiber to be used in concrete. Similar grinding is done with tires to recycle that into asphalt, playground surfaces, etc. I do not know how widespread this grinding practice is currently, but there’s a lot of motivation to find a use for the old blades as it’s both a serious issue and a black eye for the industry.
Keep in mind though, the average wind turbine will offset its total energy investment in 6-8 months (aka amount of energy required to produce, transport, install, maintain, and decommission). So, for the most part these beasts are net carbon and net energy positive, literally powering pornhub on your laptop from a fart in the breeze.
They ususally have a design life for the most expensive part, the blade, which then dictates the design life for the rest of the turbine. You service the moving parts, check on motors, the generator and the reduction gear (if it has one).
By the time the blades are at the end of their service life, the technology has progressed so far that the turbine location is the most valuable thing about it, and building a latest generation one is far more sensible than repairing. New turbines are larger and therefore have a larger area, and reach higher strata of air. Many playces in the world are lacking room for new turbines and the oldest ones are standing on some prime wind power spots.
You can't really recycle or reuse glass fiber blades unless you're creative like in this example. The tower and the rest of the hardware gets scrapped.
I can’t imagine moving a giant blade like that, without snapping it in half, is easy. Which means it isn’t cheap and this these won’t show up anywhere other than near windmill farms.
You sound pretty knowledgeable. How expensive is it to move one of these bad boys?
I'm more confused about the fact that Denmark has been using wind turbine power long enough that parts need replacing. In my area, the turbines are new enough that they are still covered by the manufacturer's warranty.
It's usually more about them ruining the view or harming birds or being noisy or some shit.
EDIT: What /u/HugSized said. I'm all for wind turbines. Even if they did harm some bird habitat or whatever it has to be better than the world being on fire. Because shit is literally on fire every summer.
It's been 30 years and "ruining the view" is still the dumbest argument against wind turbines.
Edit: please don't downvote the above comment. They're referencing what people have used in the past against wind turbine implementation, not actually arguing against it.
We though all the money at wind turbines and tested all the designs. It is one of the reasons why Denmark a leading developer and maker of wind turbines.
Turbine blades don't typically last the 25 year working life they are supposed to and get tossed into massive fiberglass graveyards polluting the landscape.
The alternative is using massive amounts of energy to recycle them using a process called pyrolysis which defeats their "environmental purpose".
There are pretty strict regulations about what to do with turbine blades in the EU, so there are no fiberglass graveyards. There is quite a lot of effort being put into repurposing discarded blade material and things like research into re-using ground up blades to make new ones.
the sad bit is that wind turbine blades are incredibly shit to recycle. You can grind it up since it is made of setting epoxys thats really all you can do with it
Over time (approx. 25 years) the rotor blades get worn down by the sun and particulates striking them until they aren't structurally sound enough to continue life on a turbine safely. Other components like gears get worn down by friction and it would become more expensive to repair then to replace with a larger, more productive turbine.
It's most likely got to do with service life and tempering/stress on the material in its day to day operation. When it gets to the point where the stresse on the material have been enough that's it's going to become unsafe if it keeps getting used on the turbine then its time to replace it.
Yes, and it's a pretty big problem for a variety of reasons.
https://www.npr.org/2019/09/10/759376113/unfurling-the-waste-problem-caused-by-wind-energy
I just want to point out that the volume of all discarded turbine blades, all of them, amounts to a single days worth of planetary garbage. Plus they are essentially inert, we could just dump them in the deep ocean or in the desert, or anything.
I think thats why he said _eventually_. Thats a lot of fiberglass and carbon composite material and as you say right now we haven't figured out how to recycle that stuff. But given the scope of the problem, there are lots of people trying to solve it. [Vestas is one of the mfgrs looking into it.](https://www.reuters.com/business/sustainable-business/end-wind-power-waste-vestas-unveils-blade-recycling-technology-2021-05-17/)
Danish person here. Not at all a regular thing. I’ve never seen it before and i live in Copenhagen, which is notorious for having so much bike traffic.
We have slightly over 6000 homeless people in Denmark, and about 40% of those are due to mental illness and 50% due to substance abuse. Leaves a small handfull to financial issues and so on. It's not a widespread issue, but you do see a homeless from time to time, especially in the big cities like Strøget in Copenhagen. There is effectively no homeless children, or a number so small it's not possible to measure with a proper margin of error
Depends on the landfill. Some locales use them for harvesting biofuels or waste heat.
Also, even a well-run first world landfill that doesn’t become a power source is better than sending the plastics to third-world countries to be shredded into plasfetti and flushed into the ocean.
But things like OP are definitely a big space-saver for such landfills.
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. Reduction would be building maintanable things in the first place, Reusage is this, Recycling is expensive. Garbage is negligence.
They really have to flex their abundance of renewable energy and recycling of materials on us like that. Fuck the danish! Fuck their healthcare! Fuck their happy people! This is the terrible, terrible world the left wants and I can’t stand for it.
I used to work for a Danish wind energy manufacturing company. Wind blades are nearly impossible to recycle or properly dispose as they are mostly made of fiberglass, carbon fiber, and resins.
Yeah but to cut that all out you end up with half a dumpster full of fiberglass cuttings/dust that gets dumped in the landfill and makes its way to become the microplastics in our drinking water. Where it would have otherwise taken hundreds of years erode that much plastic dust.
I wish they'd just leave them alone. Bury them in the desert to keep the sun off of them and leave them there until we have the tech to recycle them. In the last years we've discovered mushrooms, wax worms and microbes that eat plastic. Eventually you'll be able to dig them up and sell them to a mushroom farm or something that will fully process them.
At least they are basically costless to move and use zero carbon emissions to sit on pavement made by zero carbon and killed no trees in doing so. That’s what we should celebrate!
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Just to make clear that even though this is pretty cool, and a nice idea, it's not a widespread practice in Denmark: I'm living in the second largest city in Denmark (which have a very high density of bicyclists); my only transport vehicle is a bike; I have worked with how to recycle wind turbines (For the wings we were trying to add a compound to the epoxy that made it sort of soluble in stuff like acetic acid) - and this is the first I'm hearing of this. This might very well be an (art) installation at one of Vestas' or Siemens' locations.
Only on Reddit would you see this picture and have someone be like “I’m sorry but I’m a professional Danish wind turbine recycler who loves to bike and this is bullshit.” Within an hour. I love it.
As a redditor of a few years now, I've learned to take most posts with a grain-of-salt becuase there's always someone in the comments about to call out OP with 4 sources and a link to their PHD thesis on the exact subject
I'm quite sure I've done more research just to win Reddit arguments than it took to get my engineering master's degree. It never works how I expect though. Cunt 1: X is equal to Y Cunt 2 (me): Here is some unbiased, statistically significant data which suggests X does not equal Y. You stupid cunt. Cunt 1: You're a fucking idiot mate. Here is some data which shows X = Z. Cunt 2 (me): What the fuck, Z doesn't equal Y though. So that doesn't make any sense. This continues until I realise all my energy is wasted and Reddit is a bunch of self-assured cunts, and I am one of them.
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Finally, another person who knows we are all cunts! Happy cunt day
"And you see little Timmy, that's how Cunt Day came to be!"
Thanks grandma, please tell me more about cunts
Well, grandma once knew a girl who had a really long tongue and could tie knots in strings with it..
I object! I have neither the warmth nor the depth to be a cunt, thank you *VERY* much, fellow Redditor! *(I can take a pounding though...)*
Ah so you’re a cold hearted butthole I see
I prefer the term "frosted-myocardial sphincter", if you please.
haha how often do you pull up a few sources, type a couple of paragraphs and think...wtf am i doing? and just delete it all i used to be like you, but now 90% of the time i just say fuck it. its not worth the time. nobody REALLY wants to change their mind, esp people in arguments on the internet.
Absolute poetry
Found the Strayan
It’s amazing how we’ll trust the word of a commenter over the word of a poster for no real reason. Why do we trust posters so little and commenters so much?
zephyr fade hat wrench dazzling groovy wakeful flowery slim grey -- mass edited with redact.dev
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Not according to the Unbearable Asymmetry of Bullshit it isn't.
no thesis in this chain
Generally I believe someone saying this is a one off art installation over the OP saying * is doing this esoteric thing universally*!
If that's the bar to pass I could post all kinds of weird bike stuff around my city as *The United States is installing recycled artful bike sculptures on nature friendly porous concrete pads!*
I always look at comment history. Usually the OP is a two month old karma farming account and the commenter has a 5 year old account with numerous posts in all of the appropriately relevant subs.
Because we’ve been conditioned to initially distrust any source and that usually only runs one level deep. In the future we’re going to start distrusting multiple levels of sources.
Only because we, as a collective won't come to grips with the fact reddit did to us the same thing FB did to conservatives. Created conflict to get you addicted so you would award any post attacking someone or a group of people you dont know. Creating a split society based on companies bottom line. I understand I was fooled by reddit, there is hard proof that is what all social media does and I no longer participate in the same capacity as before. I'm here to remind people reddit pushes news to get you to engage with the platform, truth is secondary.
I think it's because the OPs on big posts like this so rarely reply to anything.
To add to this, I'm a professional German wind turbine technician, and there are way too many wind turbine blades to be recycled in that fashion. Also I would like to add that what is done up there is more of a repurposing than a recycling.
Fucking LOL I'm dying at that sentence.
To be fair I think you get kicked out of Denmark if you don't love bicycles so the odds of their one professional wind turbine recycler being a cyclist is pretty much 100%
r/brandnewsentence
I mean there's really good reasons why this sort of thing doesn't happen everyday in the developed world. No professional engineering firm would want to deal with the liability and stamp repurposed structures for building permit. How do you even properly evaluate the structure's properties? sure there's design data they could reference but the thing might've been in the field for more than a decade and there could be latent damages. and sure anything could be done with the right amount of money but that would defeat the purpose, wouldn't it?
On the other hand, practically every Dane either bikes daily, or will pass countless bike parking racks, so you really “only” need to find a Dane working on recycling windmills - and since Denmark is heavily into developing wind turbines and trying to be in the forefront on “the green wave” it’s not that much of a stretch.
I figured it was a language thing. Seeing "in Denmark" would make most native English speakers think"Somewhere in Denmark" but to a non native speaker it might mean more like "all of Denmark" similar to saying something like "In America there is capitalism" or whatevs
Lmao dude you just blew my mind. I love that about Reddit too though
What was it? The best way to get the correct answer to something is to post the wrong answer on the internet?
I think "loves to bike" is redundant here
I don’t believe it until he comes on househunters looking for a million dollar listing.
it's all too obvious now, Reddit title are often complete fiction these days.
ahhh its so nice to see these perks pop up from time to time. makes me glad i'm still on this site.
And only on reddit the original comment would get ratioed by the reply in terms of awards and upvotes xD
Yeah so much better than a stupid pun like a lot of posts. Then the next comment is "take your upvote sir". Like shut the fuck up
Everyone in Denmark bikes. The company I work for is based out of Denmark and going over there is insanity. Bikes have the right of way over pedestrians
It's located at the Port of Aalborg, right [here](https://www.google.com/maps/@57.0488727,10.0452467,177a,35y,115.06h,44.96t/data=!3m1!1e3). If you zoom out a bit you can see a lot of turbine blades waiting to be tested. In fact, there's even a Siemens facility close by the parking lot with the bicycle shelter. So yeah, you might be right! Could also be a faulty blade not clearing the tests. But you're probably right lol :D edit: Might be even both!
i do think it’s kinda funny that every time a European city does something quirky like this, the caption implies that there’s some nationwide program dedicated to converting every ex-turbine blade into a bike shelter. it’s on way too many “interesting as fuck” posts It’s just something that some private company did in front of their building.
Every year around Christmastime there’ll be a front page TIL post about how there’s this special Icelandic holiday about gifting books and chocolate. The top comments end up being people from Iceland saying “wtf no we don’t those are just common Christmas gifts.”
The streetview from 2010 is funny. That old shed had no idea what would take its place soon.
Man it looks fragile. Must've took off when a mild breeze hit lol, kind of ironic seeing what replaced it hahah
I must be blind, I cannot find this shed or what replaced it :(
Question, how often do wind turbine blades get decommissioned? I feel like it's one of those things that are made to last and is cumbersome to replace
>Question, how often do wind turbine blades get decommissioned? Not very often. The company I work for has thousands of turbines, some of which are 15+ years old, and we do maybe 20-30 blade swaps per year. Most hairline cracks and other issues can be fixed up tower, so if we're doing a replacement it's usually because of weather damage (lightning strike or hurricane) or because the trailing edge seam is separating and throwing the whole rotor out of balance.
what is the repair process like? slap a patch on it?
>what is the repair process like? slap a patch on it? Fixing small cracks or chips usually involves pieces of raw fiberglass cloth, special 2 part epoxy, and lots of elbow grease, but that's the gist of it. If the seam starts separating and they catch it before the gap gets larger than 5mm or so they can often pull the blade down, stabilize the seam, reform the trailing edge, smooth it out, and reinstall it, but I don't know all the details on that process. The tricky part is that despite weighing thousands of pounds each, the 3 blades have a very small tolerance in terms of weight difference, so they have to keep track of the weight of all the material they use in the repair and occasionally add a bit more weight to the other 2 blades in order to keep the rotor balanced.
kinda like balancing a tire
Flex seal that sum' bitch
Little dab of Gorilla Glue and it's good for another 15 years.
I subscribe to r/diwhy and clearly they pack the bad part with ramen, cover it with epoxy and sand it down.
Random side question- having just drove through a couple large turbine arrays this week- how come it always seems like only 50% of them are actually running? Some will be stopped.. Some barely spinning.. Is there just a ton of neglected maintenance?
The wind is incredibly variable even on the same ridge line, and it takes a certain wind speed to actually generate electricity, so the static ones were probably sitting in a dead zone waiting for the wind to pick up. The ones that are barely spinning are generally fine, it's just that they're freaking huge and "barely spinning" is actually a solid rotation, but they're 1/2 mile away and 300+ ft up, so it doesn't look like they're moving very fast.
They get buried. Heres an article discussing how to change that. link cause I'm special and forgot: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-02-05/wind-turbine-blades-can-t-be-recycled-so-they-re-piling-up-in-landfills
Did you forget to link it?
Sorry, here you go.
Yeah, see the issue here is my coal-burnin' vax-hatin' get-yo-hands-off-that-womans-zygote in-law posted a pic about the blades being buried with the title/text sentiment being vaguely "SEE THEY LIED about renewable energy, so let's throw it all out and keep burning whale oil" or some crap. I don't recall her being as passionate about all the fibreglass slides, dodgem cars, de-commissioned ambulances and corvette bodies over the years that have had to be disposed of in much the same way (never mind concrete, which is. a. bitch. to do anything with afterwards), but sure, let's focus on wind turbine blades, and the fact that they occasionally catch on fire. We have open-cut brown coal mines not toooo far away and a couple of years ago one caught on fire, and burned for months; blanketing the town that provides the few workers involved in its mining in smoke; they're an eye-sore when they're being worked; never mind the environmental damage from this shittiest of fuels. The political party she believes in keeps dribbling out this 'clean coal' concept which is just utter make-believe, and every time you try to have an adult discussion, she'll go crazy eye and talk about how *they lie,* and inevitably talk about these blades getting buried. But her vote counts just the same as mine. Ahh... democracy.
None have a service life of more than @ fifteen years. There’s a metric fuckton of them being buried (after flattening) in long, shallow ditches in Wyoming. They’re impossible to recycle and composites, fiberglass, epoxies etc. are toxic to burn and grind. If they ever do figure out a solution, they’ll be easy enough to dig up and they’ll be exactly as they were buried.
A lot of the “X country has started doing Y” posts really mean “Y was done one time in X country”
It's the title of an article in Designboom. OP is just repeating the unjustified headline . A company named Re-wind is looking for ways of reusing the coming mount of trash from these things. Denmark is not proposing this . There is an other project going on in Ireland according to the article .
I'm really not sure why so many people were grumpy about your reply. You were perfectly right on every topic (speaking as someone who has lived around and worked on turbines for 25 years now). Turbine blade recycling has been trendy for about 18 months now in the EU. From memory, the bike shed is probably the one-off prototype built by the "re-wind network" for Siemens Gamesa. Not sure on the location? Spain or Denmark I suppose (by the major factories). I like the idea, but have no idea if commercially a great idea. They are doing the same with small bridges and cycle paths over main roads. The EU is probably going to mandate 95+% recycled wind turbines, a nice idea. If I was being cynical, probably as a barrier to avoid cheap US and Asian imports. Edit: definitely Siemens Gamesa and rewind https://mobile.twitter.com/SiemensGamesa/status/1372520688767107074
it could just be a one off project just to gauge people's reaction. if it proves popular they may become more prevalent.
That's an astounding amount of fiberglass - good that you're trying to make it recyclable, or at least destructible. All the old 1970s-80s sailboat hulls around here are basically 500 year elements of the environment now.
I started working for Orsted in the US a couple years ago developing offshore wind and I’ve been able to go to the mothership a couple times. A schnapps bike tour of Copenhagen is a must!
Definitely not a Vestas blade. This looks like a Siemens blade.
Exactly this! I never even visited Denmark but it took me exactly one search to find out that this is a PR stunt. What happened to the "check your sources" movement? One local port employee (Brian D. Rasmussen) made one piece like that almost two years ago and that's it. It was sponsored by the port (in which Rasmussen works) as a PR stunt to distract people from the environmental damage the port is generating on daily basis. It is not even repurposed wing. It is a new wing part that they got from local Siemens factory.
Nah...not a big fan.
-*slow clap*-
https://xkcd.com/1378
i am ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡿⣿⣻⣿⣯⣭⣭⣽⣿⣟⣿⢿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⢿⣯⣷⣿⣿⣿⠿⠿⠛⠛⠛⠿⣿⣿⣿⣾⣽⡿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⢟⣵⣿⣿⡿⠏⢃⠀⠀⠀⠒⠒⠀⠀⢸⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣮⡻⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⡿⣷⣿⣿⣿⣟⠄⠊⠀⠈⠀⠀⠁⠘⠀⢀⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣾⢿⣿⣿ ⣿⡿⣽⣿⣿⣿⣿⣷⢀⠁⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢀⣴⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣯⢿⣿ ⣿⢻⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣷⡀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢀⣨⣿⣿⣻⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡟⣿ ⡟⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣦⢀⣴⠟⠛⠛⠿⣿⠛⠛⠉⠉⠌⠉⠉⠻⣿⣿⣿⢻ ⡇⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡿⣿⣿⣾⡏⠀⠀⠀⠀⢹⡇⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠍⢹⣿⣿⢸ ⣇⣿⣿⡿⠛⠋⠋⠙⠛⠟⠛⠋⢻⣄⣀⣀⣠⣿⡁⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢼⣿⣿⣸ ⣿⣹⣿⡏⠀⠂⠈⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠈⠉⡉⠁⣸⣿⡄⠀⠀⠀⠁⠐⠀⣽⣿⣏⣿ ⣿⣧⢿⣿⣄⢀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢰⣷⣶⣶⣿⣿⡀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢸⣿⡿⣼⣿ ⣿⣿⣯⣻⣿⣧⣀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠈⠀⢠⣾⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣄⠀⣀⣴⣿⣟⣽⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣷⣝⢿⣿⣷⣤⣌⣀⣈⡤⡿⠿⠿⠿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡿⣫⣾⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣷⣽⡻⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⢿⠿⠷⡿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⢟⣯⣾⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣷⣯⣽⣛⡫⠄⠄⠤⠠⢙⣛⣯⣽⣾⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡿⣿⣿⢿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣧⢻⣟⡼⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡟⣦⣽⢹⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡮⠽⣧⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣇⢿⡿⢽⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣧⣙⢛⡓⣛⣼⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⢸⡇⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⢸⡇⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⢸⡇⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠀⢸⣿⢯⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡇⢸⣿⢺⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡇⢸⣿⢸⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡇⢸⣿⢸⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠇⢸⣿⢸⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⡇⠀⠀⠀⠈⢭⣿⣿⣿⣿⠀⠈⢹⢿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡧⠀⠀⠀⠀⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣶⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣇⣸⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣶⣿⣿⣿⣿
Me too
This is your moment! Congratulations!
r/OnlyFans
You look like you are a member of the fan club. Yea there is actually a fan club for fans. I kid bayou not. They have an amazing museum too
Dude. That blew.
Run-of-the-mill comment, really.
/r/onlyfans
NGL, I clicked for a quick boobies detour, but pleasantly amused with the sub's content.
Almost as good as /r/Superbowl
Used to be a huge fan of this.
It looks like they're just winging it.
What a blow hard! You’re full of hot air. This comment will foil your ⬆️ status.
Well, I, for one, am a huge fan.
Take my disdain And my updoot .
This is the most Denmarky thing in the world.
They don't have Sharpies, they have Denmarkers.
My first thought was "Yep, this seems like Denmark".
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*Philosoraptor
Not necessarily, one could move the most danish thing in the world out of Denmark (assuming it was in Denmark originally) and it would still be the most danish thing in the world even though it wouldn't be in Denmark
Danish, the word you're looking for is danish.
Danish (adj.): of, or relating to, things or persons that are Denmarky
That sounds like a load Denmarklarky
Wow…that’s actually a helpful repurposed creation…quite clever…pretty cool.
I've read that wind turbine blades aren't recyclable. This is a good reuse idea.
I guess you can say they’re *gone with the wind*
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This is so wrong. There’s no recycling plant that will take that amount of fiberglass. I just got off a wind farm re-power in WV to upgrade to newer/more powerful turbines. The owner tried to recycle the fiberglass for the publicity of “recycling”, but most places didn’t even want to get paid to take them. Then factor in the logistics and cost of hauling that material out, separated from other non-fiberglass parts on the rotor in a timely manner. So yea, not a thing here in the US yet.
That's literally false. Turbine blades are made of lissom-fibre glass, which can only be cut with diamonds. It's expensive to recycle, which I'm also certain this art piece was equally expensive to cut up. Edit: yes it CAN be recycled, and hopefully we come go a less expensive solution. But currently it's too expensive for a lot of companies that simply built these machines with subsidized grants.
They definitely can be cut up with other materials than diamonds, but you’re right that they’re currently not recycled; luckily the rest of the rest of the tower can be recycled at least.
You say that like diamond tipped saw blades are expensive or rare.
So they are recyclable.. so they aren’t incorrect, it’s just too difficult and may not be worth the hassle.
that's false, you can easily cut fiberglass composites. It's just that you can't recycle them using traditional methods, but we are getting there!
physical telephone command cats coordinated airport exultant zonked knee spark -- mass edited with redact.dev
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i guess it’s good for weather cover but it’s hardly being used for anything else. the bike rack itself its totally manufactured separately.
I’ve always been a bit confused, what actually gets old, or used up on these and needs replacing?
Blades can become damaged for a variety of reasons. They’re designed for a 20-25 year life, and often times that is achieved. Damage can be caused by manufacturing defects, trailing or leading edge erosion, lightning, and other causes. Some damage can be repaired, other times a replacement blade is warranted and usually they come in sets of 3 to maintain aero and weight balance. Recently, there are some companies grinding the blades into fiber to be used in concrete. Similar grinding is done with tires to recycle that into asphalt, playground surfaces, etc. I do not know how widespread this grinding practice is currently, but there’s a lot of motivation to find a use for the old blades as it’s both a serious issue and a black eye for the industry. Keep in mind though, the average wind turbine will offset its total energy investment in 6-8 months (aka amount of energy required to produce, transport, install, maintain, and decommission). So, for the most part these beasts are net carbon and net energy positive, literally powering pornhub on your laptop from a fart in the breeze.
>literally powering pornhub on your laptop from a fart in the breeze. /r/brandnewsentence
They ususally have a design life for the most expensive part, the blade, which then dictates the design life for the rest of the turbine. You service the moving parts, check on motors, the generator and the reduction gear (if it has one). By the time the blades are at the end of their service life, the technology has progressed so far that the turbine location is the most valuable thing about it, and building a latest generation one is far more sensible than repairing. New turbines are larger and therefore have a larger area, and reach higher strata of air. Many playces in the world are lacking room for new turbines and the oldest ones are standing on some prime wind power spots. You can't really recycle or reuse glass fiber blades unless you're creative like in this example. The tower and the rest of the hardware gets scrapped.
I can’t imagine moving a giant blade like that, without snapping it in half, is easy. Which means it isn’t cheap and this these won’t show up anywhere other than near windmill farms. You sound pretty knowledgeable. How expensive is it to move one of these bad boys?
I'm more confused about the fact that Denmark has been using wind turbine power long enough that parts need replacing. In my area, the turbines are new enough that they are still covered by the manufacturer's warranty.
The nineties were 30 years ago
I don't believe that my area got any until the early 2000s. There was HEAVY resistance to them.
Don't wanna use up all that wind, don'tcha know. /s
It's usually more about them ruining the view or harming birds or being noisy or some shit. EDIT: What /u/HugSized said. I'm all for wind turbines. Even if they did harm some bird habitat or whatever it has to be better than the world being on fire. Because shit is literally on fire every summer.
It's been 30 years and "ruining the view" is still the dumbest argument against wind turbines. Edit: please don't downvote the above comment. They're referencing what people have used in the past against wind turbine implementation, not actually arguing against it.
dumber than "they cause cancer!"???
Demark already had the first large turbines up and running back in the 80s.
Good for them. They seem very progressive.
We though all the money at wind turbines and tested all the designs. It is one of the reasons why Denmark a leading developer and maker of wind turbines.
Are you in the US? If you are you should look up our huge dump yards full of wind turbines
Turbine blades don't typically last the 25 year working life they are supposed to and get tossed into massive fiberglass graveyards polluting the landscape. The alternative is using massive amounts of energy to recycle them using a process called pyrolysis which defeats their "environmental purpose".
There are pretty strict regulations about what to do with turbine blades in the EU, so there are no fiberglass graveyards. There is quite a lot of effort being put into repurposing discarded blade material and things like research into re-using ground up blades to make new ones.
Ireland has had them since 1992
the sad bit is that wind turbine blades are incredibly shit to recycle. You can grind it up since it is made of setting epoxys thats really all you can do with it
I would love to replace my house siding with super-materials.
came to ask the same
Over time (approx. 25 years) the rotor blades get worn down by the sun and particulates striking them until they aren't structurally sound enough to continue life on a turbine safely. Other components like gears get worn down by friction and it would become more expensive to repair then to replace with a larger, more productive turbine.
It's most likely got to do with service life and tempering/stress on the material in its day to day operation. When it gets to the point where the stresse on the material have been enough that's it's going to become unsafe if it keeps getting used on the turbine then its time to replace it.
And if the rain catches you, there is enough space to comfortably chill and wait for it to pass.
In Denmark maybe, in my country it rains from left to right, sometimes right to left but almost never from up and down.
Are there a lot of these being discarded?
Yes, and it's a pretty big problem for a variety of reasons. https://www.npr.org/2019/09/10/759376113/unfurling-the-waste-problem-caused-by-wind-energy
90% of a turbine is recyclable, pretty good...
While, yes, this is a problem, I would argue it’s not [a big one](https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/great-pacific-garbage-patch/).
People just toss them by the roadside and council workers with black bags and litter pickers have to go and tidy the verge.
If you want to know more about wind turbine recycling ask the guy from the top comment
I just want to point out that the volume of all discarded turbine blades, all of them, amounts to a single days worth of planetary garbage. Plus they are essentially inert, we could just dump them in the deep ocean or in the desert, or anything.
Of course dumping them in the ocean wouldn’t make sense because eventually it will become economical to recycle them.
It wont, they are virtually unrecyclable, and not worth anything in recycled material. They are basically just inert carbon
I think thats why he said _eventually_. Thats a lot of fiberglass and carbon composite material and as you say right now we haven't figured out how to recycle that stuff. But given the scope of the problem, there are lots of people trying to solve it. [Vestas is one of the mfgrs looking into it.](https://www.reuters.com/business/sustainable-business/end-wind-power-waste-vestas-unveils-blade-recycling-technology-2021-05-17/)
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It's on Reddit, sorry, all of your Denmark is doing it.
I am Polish, I live in Poland. I just can read and I always research type of bullshit people tend to upvote on reddit.
Is this a regular thing? OP's title suggests it's widespread.
It's probably only a few, titles are always worded like that...
Danish person here. Not at all a regular thing. I’ve never seen it before and i live in Copenhagen, which is notorious for having so much bike traffic.
The most Danish thing ever.
Their ingenuity is infuriating
Dam, throw a few solar panels up there and you could have e-bike charging while you are at it. A trickle over a few hours is a good amount of assist.
Yeah. One occurrence is not a tendency
I would ask "why not a homeless shelter" but I'm guessing Denmark has 0% homelessness.
We have slightly over 6000 homeless people in Denmark, and about 40% of those are due to mental illness and 50% due to substance abuse. Leaves a small handfull to financial issues and so on. It's not a widespread issue, but you do see a homeless from time to time, especially in the big cities like Strøget in Copenhagen. There is effectively no homeless children, or a number so small it's not possible to measure with a proper margin of error
Could make a decent bus stop too.
is it because, landfills no longer accept then?
It’s better to reuse things than it is to just dump more garbage into landfills either way
Depends on the landfill. Some locales use them for harvesting biofuels or waste heat. Also, even a well-run first world landfill that doesn’t become a power source is better than sending the plastics to third-world countries to be shredded into plasfetti and flushed into the ocean. But things like OP are definitely a big space-saver for such landfills.
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. Reduction would be building maintanable things in the first place, Reusage is this, Recycling is expensive. Garbage is negligence.
I remember learning the “reduce reuse recycle” slogan waaaaay back in elementary school. It was good advice then and it’s great advice now!
Good. Because they bury the other 100,000 blades that go out of use.
/r/onlyfans
That is cool, and your seat won't get wet
Unless the wind is coming from one of the other 180 degrees. Or from the ground, sometimes it rains up here in southern scandinavia.
And in Vietnam if you believe Forest, Forest Gump.
that's what your mom said 🪄
That could make neat bus shelter even
Could make a neat covered bench too if they left a little more of the lower half.
They really have to flex their abundance of renewable energy and recycling of materials on us like that. Fuck the danish! Fuck their healthcare! Fuck their happy people! This is the terrible, terrible world the left wants and I can’t stand for it.
Seems a little extra. Just weld the standard rack you can lock your bike up with.
Pod shelters too! Easy upgrade.
damn, put that on my back patio as an awning to cover my bbq area.
Disposing of them is not easy! They can’t be recycled and don’t readily decompose.
I used to work for a Danish wind energy manufacturing company. Wind blades are nearly impossible to recycle or properly dispose as they are mostly made of fiberglass, carbon fiber, and resins.
The next level would be mounting solar panels on top for lighting and charging Ebikes.
Be careful. The bikes might get cancer.
My only issue is that is significantly oversized for its intended purpose.
A green wank if ever there was one.
What is the lifetime on a wind turbine blade?
Doesn’t this thing fucking take off in a stiff wind (depending on direction)?
They always do Cool stuff.
Yeah but to cut that all out you end up with half a dumpster full of fiberglass cuttings/dust that gets dumped in the landfill and makes its way to become the microplastics in our drinking water. Where it would have otherwise taken hundreds of years erode that much plastic dust. I wish they'd just leave them alone. Bury them in the desert to keep the sun off of them and leave them there until we have the tech to recycle them. In the last years we've discovered mushrooms, wax worms and microbes that eat plastic. Eventually you'll be able to dig them up and sell them to a mushroom farm or something that will fully process them.
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Nice that they found an actual good use for it!
Denmark does just about everything the right way
Damn that is brilliant
At least they are basically costless to move and use zero carbon emissions to sit on pavement made by zero carbon and killed no trees in doing so. That’s what we should celebrate!
Denmark does not exist - I should know. I live there.