{"id":210657,"date":"2025-04-05T21:09:00","date_gmt":"2025-04-06T02:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/04\/recycling-wind-turbine-blade-materials-to-make-improved-plastics"},"modified":"2025-04-05T21:09:00","modified_gmt":"2025-04-06T02:09:00","slug":"recycling-wind-turbine-blade-materials-to-make-improved-plastics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/04\/recycling-wind-turbine-blade-materials-to-make-improved-plastics","title":{"rendered":"Recycling wind turbine blade materials to make improved plastics"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/recycling-wind-turbine-blade-materials-to-make-improved-plastics.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>A new method to recycle wind turbine blades without using harsh chemicals resulted in the recovery of high-strength glass fibers and resins that allowed Washington State University researchers to repurpose the materials to create stronger plastics.<\/p>\n<p>The innovation provides a simple and environmentally friendly way to recycle wind turbine blades to create useful products.<\/p>\n<p>Reporting in the journal, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencedirect.com\/science\/article\/pii\/S0921344925000382?via%3Dihub\" target=\"_blank\"><i>Resource, Conservation, and Recycling<\/i><\/a>, the team of researchers cut the <a href=\"https:\/\/techxplore.com\/tags\/lightweight+material\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">lightweight material<\/a> that is commonly used in <a href=\"https:\/\/techxplore.com\/tags\/wind+turbine+blades\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">wind turbine blades<\/a>, called glass fiber-reinforced polymer (GFRP), into approximately two inch-sized blocks. They then soaked the flakes in a bath of low-toxicity organic salt in pressurized, superheated water for about two hours to break down the material. They then repurposed its components to make stronger plastics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A new method to recycle wind turbine blades without using harsh chemicals resulted in the recovery of high-strength glass fibers and resins that allowed Washington State University researchers to repurpose the materials to create stronger plastics. The innovation provides a simple and environmentally friendly way to recycle wind turbine blades to create useful products. Reporting [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":732,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-210657","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chemistry","category-sustainability"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210657","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/732"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=210657"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210657\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=210657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=210657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=210657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}