Oliver Grewal
Master Thesis - Energy Technology - 2020
Denmark faces a challenge of treating wind turbine blades at their end of life. Currently they have largely been landfilled, but this yields no recovery of the energy or material value vested in the blades. Given the high price of blade material, together with the trend of blades getting more expensive, the inadequacy of current practices is apparent.
This thesis investigates the degree of the problem, that is, the amount of blade material that needs to be treated in Denmark in the future.
Furthermore, it is sought to develop a Geographic information system-model that can minimize the direct and indirect costs of EoL treatment of wind turbine blades whilst accounting for the cost of transport on a per turbine basis.
The main inputs of the Geographic Information System-model are: the future blade material inflow, the location of current and future turbines, the location of EoL-sites and the costs and benefits related to each EoL technology per ton of blade material.
A conceptual model was developed for which the total direct and indirect EoL costs of Danish wind turbine blades were minimized. The developed model accounts for the type of blade, its weight (which relates to the truck size and fuel consumption) and the available EoL technologies. Furthermore, it accounted for the marine freight required to carry out the EoL management of offshore turbines.
Finally, the portion of the total EoL costs constituted by transport were yielded. These were considerably high for all investigated turbine categories, which strongly suggests that generalizing the transport related costs, as is done currently, is not warranted.