Comparative study of thermochemical recycling with solvolysis and pyrolysis of End-of-Life wind turbine blades: Rekovind2 - WP3
2023 (English)Report (Other academic)
Abstract [en]
There is an urgent need for the development of viable recycling solutions for the increasing waste streams of glass fiber composites (GFRPs) from all sectors i.e. leisure boats, windmills and building constructions. Two potential recycling methods that can separate and recover both the polymers and the high-quality fibers from these kinds of materials are pyrolysis and solvolysis. In this project recycling of an epoxy-based Endof-Life wind turbine blade was evaluated in lab scale using the two methods. In previous literature the main focus has been on the quality of the fibers but in this project the main focus was to compare the chemical composition of the oil products. The produced oils from solvolysis and pyrolysis have been compared with a multianalysis approach by using elemental analysis, GC-MS, pyro-GC-MS/FID, 2D NMR (HSQC) for gaining more information about the chemical structure of the produced monomers (phenols), oligomers and polymers. Almost all the volatile matter in the End-of-Life wind turbine blade was recovered as pyrolysis oil, 36 wt.% yield. The solvolysis oil yield was lower, 17 wt.%, mainly due to a major part of the solvolysis oil ended up in the aqueous solvent. The composition of the oils from both technologies was analyzed based on both their volatile i.e. monomeric and polymeric content. The result point to that both methods produced oils with similar polymeric parts according to NMR and pyro-GC-MS/FID, based on an oxygenated aliphatic network connected with aromatic phenolic structures. Increased information of chemical oil composition will be useful for further processing as raw material in refineries/chemical industries. The monomeric part of the oil produced from pyrolysis was found in relatively large amounts, ~57 wt.%, and can be a future high-value product from recycling of wind turbine blades. The total recovery of phenolics from the pyrolysis was 18 wt.% of the wind turbine blade weight.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2023. , p. 56
Keywords [en]
Recycling of composites, glass fiber composites, GFRP, thermochemical recycling, solvolysis, hydrothermal liquification, HTL, pyrolysis, End-of-Life (EOL) wind turbine blades, epoxy thermoset, 2D NMR, HSQC, pyrolysis-GC-MS, oil quality
National Category
Composite Science and Engineering
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:ri:diva-65657OAI: oai:DiVA.org:ri-65657DiVA, id: diva2:1780227
Note
Project name ” Rekovind2 - Digitalization of wind blade streams before reuse and recycling”, Swedish Energy Agency project number 47044-2, Dnr 2021-029795, RISE Project P113615-1
2023-07-052023-07-052023-07-05Bibliographically approved