Green New Landfill Deal

[Tom Kirkman + 8,860]

Sioux Falls landfill tightens rules after Iowa dumps dozens of wind turbine blades

Iowa wind-farms brought dozens of their old turbine blades to the Sioux Falls dump this summer.

But City Hall says it won't take anymore unless owners take more steps to make the massive fiberglass pieces less space consuming.

The wind energy industry isn't immune to cyclical replacement, with turbine blades needing to be replaced after a decade or two in use. That has wind energy producers looking for places to accept the blades on their turbines that need to be replaced. 

For at least two wind-farms in northern Iowa, they've found the Sioux Falls Regional Sanitary Landfill to be a suitable facility to take its aged-out turbine blades.

This year, 101 turbine blades have been trucked to the city dump. But with each one spanning 120 feet long, that's caused officials with the landfill and the Sioux Falls Public Works Department to study the long-term effect that type of refuse could have on the dump.  ...

 

... "We can't take any more unless they process them before bringing them to us," Cotter said. "We're using too many resources unloading them, driving over them a couple times and working them into the ground."

Wind energy companies considering Sioux Falls for their old blades will now be required to break them down into pieces no larger than three feet in length. Cotter said that can be done through a grinding or sheering process.  ...

[Jan van Eck + 7,558]

FIberglas strikes me as a sub-optimal material for the manufacture of those blades  (indeed, the use of a design that requires long blades is itself problematic).  The material is more sensitive to UV  (ultra-violet light) deterioration than say aluminum.  And this is the problem: once you make the determination to go to greater height and length, you end up with much greater forces acting on the components, including weights on the rotor shaft and (if used) the gearbox, all of which costs money and adds more complexity.  Aluminum can at lest be readily cut and smelted down, for total re-use.  Fiberglas, if ground up, can be recycled  (even burned as an industrial fuel!). But it remains a difficult material to handle, and so far the choice is to bury them in one big piece.  

The real solution is to go to some other design.  Or, perhaps more logically, to simply install a gas generator.  Those are of a mature technology and cheap enough to run.  Plus no landfill issues down the road. 

[NickW + 2,714]

1 hour ago, Tom Kirkman said:

Sioux Falls landfill tightens rules after Iowa dumps dozens of wind turbine blades

Iowa wind-farms brought dozens of their old turbine blades to the Sioux Falls dump this summer.

But City Hall says it won't take anymore unless owners take more steps to make the massive fiberglass pieces less space consuming.

The wind energy industry isn't immune to cyclical replacement, with turbine blades needing to be replaced after a decade or two in use. That has wind energy producers looking for places to accept the blades on their turbines that need to be replaced. 

For at least two wind-farms in northern Iowa, they've found the Sioux Falls Regional Sanitary Landfill to be a suitable facility to take its aged-out turbine blades.

This year, 101 turbine blades have been trucked to the city dump. But with each one spanning 120 feet long, that's caused officials with the landfill and the Sioux Falls Public Works Department to study the long-term effect that type of refuse could have on the dump.  ...

 

... "We can't take any more unless they process them before bringing them to us," Cotter said. "We're using too many resources unloading them, driving over them a couple times and working them into the ground."

Wind energy companies considering Sioux Falls for their old blades will now be required to break them down into pieces no larger than three feet in length. Cotter said that can be done through a grinding or sheering process.  ...

In Europe they are ground up and burned as fuel in cement kilns. Many have balsa wood cores plus the plastic content. 

[NickW + 2,714]

53 minutes ago, Jan van Eck said:

FIberglas strikes me as a sub-optimal material for the manufacture of those blades  (indeed, the use of a design that requires long blades is itself problematic).  The material is more sensitive to UV  (ultra-violet light) deterioration than say aluminum.  And this is the problem: once you make the determination to go to greater height and length, you end up with much greater forces acting on the components, including weights on the rotor shaft and (if used) the gearbox, all of which costs money and adds more complexity.  Aluminum can at lest be readily cut and smelted down, for total re-use.  Fiberglas, if ground up, can be recycled  (even burned as an industrial fuel!). But it remains a difficult material to handle, and so far the choice is to bury them in one big piece.  

The real solution is to go to some other design.  Or, perhaps more logically, to simply install a gas generator.  Those are of a mature technology and cheap enough to run.  Plus no landfill issues down the road. 

The industry is moving towards balsa wood - carbon fibre which will be much easier to dispose of as a fuel in cement kilns or incinerators. 

[Tom Kirkman + 8,860]

2 hours ago, Jan van Eck said:

FIberglas strikes me as a sub-optimal material for the manufacture of those blades  (indeed, the use of a design that requires long blades is itself problematic).  The material is more sensitive to UV  (ultra-violet light) deterioration than say aluminum.  And this is the problem: once you make the determination to go to greater height and length, you end up with much greater forces acting on the components, including weights on the rotor shaft and (if used) the gearbox, all of which costs money and adds more complexity.  Aluminum can at lest be readily cut and smelted down, for total re-use.  Fiberglas, if ground up, can be recycled  (even burned as an industrial fuel!). But it remains a difficult material to handle, and so far the choice is to bury them in one big piece.  

The real solution is to go to some other design.  Or, perhaps more logically, to simply install a gas generator.  Those are of a mature technology and cheap enough to run.  Plus no landfill issues down the road. 

Is Reblewables a word yet?

[fozzir + 68]

Here's an idea.  Move the landfill to the US/Mexico border. Stack those bad boys 6 high and it's like you kill two birds with one stone. You have a storage place and you build the wall at the same time!

[Enthalpic + 1,496]

11 hours ago, Jan van Eck said:

Plus no landfill issues down the road. 

That is what Tom is hinting at here ("oil doesn't fill landfills") but that is simply not true.

Obviously there is all the plastic that ends up there, but on top of that there is a lot of industrial waste disposal. My friend who is a biologist doing site-remediation for Enbridge says that unless the spill is very remote they just scoop up any contaminated soil and ship it to the dump. Huge volumes.

 

 

[ronwagn + 6,290]

13 hours ago, Jan van Eck said:

FIberglas strikes me as a sub-optimal material for the manufacture of those blades  (indeed, the use of a design that requires long blades is itself problematic).  The material is more sensitive to UV  (ultra-violet light) deterioration than say aluminum.  And this is the problem: once you make the determination to go to greater height and length, you end up with much greater forces acting on the components, including weights on the rotor shaft and (if used) the gearbox, all of which costs money and adds more complexity.  Aluminum can at lest be readily cut and smelted down, for total re-use.  Fiberglas, if ground up, can be recycled  (even burned as an industrial fuel!). But it remains a difficult material to handle, and so far the choice is to bury them in one big piece.  

The real solution is to go to some other design.  Or, perhaps more logically, to simply install a gas generator.  Those are of a mature technology and cheap enough to run.  Plus no landfill issues down the road. 

Aluminum is one of the most common elements on earth too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium

Of course, I prefer using natural gas and think it is more affordable in the long run. 

 

 

[Old-Ruffneck + 1,177]

1 hour ago, ronwagn said:

Aluminum is one of the most common elements on earth too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium

Of course, I prefer using natural gas and think it is more affordable in the long run. 

 

 

I agree Ron, gas and nuke is probably less in the long run per kwh. I am sure one of the folks in here have a graph showing all kwh costs.

[ronwagn + 6,290]

On 9/7/2019 at 6:37 PM, Old-Ruffneck said:

I agree Ron, gas and nuke is probably less in the long run per kwh. I am sure one of the folks in here have a graph showing all kwh costs.

I have seen those graphs, they do not count all of the hazards of radioactive waste from the original mining to paying for the disposal and security of the nuclear plants and waste. 

Dangers of Nuclear Plants and Waste https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xhPQIIW9xpOwn92z5hCGshSF7e6TP3R9sFBAAg-eQe4/edit