如何处理退役的风力涡轮机

我们现在都很清楚，可再生能源必须成为未来经济火力的主要来源。在我们向可再生能源过渡的过程中，我们必须为生产能源的结构规划好几个生命周期，这样我们就不会用过度浪费来抵消它们的好处。新发现的挑战之一是如何处理退役的风力涡轮机。风力涡轮机的平均寿命受到许多不同因素的影响:它的大小，使用频率，甚至偶尔的雷击。考虑到所有这些因素，人类的平均寿命约为25年。目前，大多数涡轮机叶片最终都被填埋，除非我们找到解决方案，否则到2050年将产生4300万吨垃圾。西英格兰大学环境管理讲师卡拉·德·劳伦蒂斯(Carla De Laurentis)对威尔·廷格尔(Will Tingle)谈到了这个问题。

卡拉:有不同的选择。您可以查看三个主要选项。一个是延长寿命。所以你知道，你能延长设计和技术寿命吗?一种可能是重新供电，部分或全部重新供电。最后一个是退役。很明显，这三个不同的都有退役的因素，因为如果你考虑寿命，为了延长寿命，你必须更换一些风力涡轮机的元件。所以在延长寿命的重新供电过程中会产生一些浪费。再一次，如果你改变叶片的大小，如果改变它的高度，所以你要替换旧的冬季涡轮机，你会留下一些需要考虑的材料。就你能做什么而言。 There are differences. I think one of the main issues that we need to try and avoid is that this waste material ends up in landfill. There is lots of interest from the wind industry to avoid that with 2025 being a year where they want to stop wind farms and the commissioning, waste reaching landfill. The options and opportunities I suppose are what we can do with those, with our waste material and with waste management. Can we look at the opportunities that the circular economy can offer to reuse, repurpose some of those materials? There are challenges, you know, the challenges are due to issues around the recycled recycling material in the market available for the cost that you pay for secondary material. They sometimes are in competition with primary resources, accessibility of the wine farm because obviously some of the sites are gonna be up in the hills,so logistically as well it's gonna be difficult to actually collect and manage that waste. But it is also an emergent market. So what can you do with those materials and those dismissed wind farms? One of the main challenges I suppose is if you look at the commissioning. I was quite interested to see that basically 85% to 90% of the materials of a wind farm can actually be recycled. And that is because I suppose quite a lot of the components are made of steel or concrete. If you think about the base in actual terms, there is no way that we are actually reaching those rates and one of the main challenges due to the blade and the way the material is composed of in the blade. Because it's mostly composite, which is much more complex. So there are different options that we can actually look at, especially if we start looking at circular economy and circular economy approaches to reusing them.

威尔——我最近读到一些关于叶片被用来支撑桥梁的文章。那么这些刀片的实际再利用是什么呢?

卡拉:有很多机会可以探索。正如您所提到的，其中一些可以用于或重用。在循环经济中，我们称之为“重新利用”。所以我们把它们用于不同的目的。它们可以用作结构材料，比如建造桥梁，但我们也可以用它们来建造游乐场，所以你可以用不同的方式来使用这种材料。问题是，举个例子，在鹿特丹建造的第一个游乐场，你用了五个刀片来建造一个儿童游乐场。你知道，我们谈论的是在接下来的几年里，废物的数量会急剧增加。那么，一旦问题的规模变得更大，我们能做些什么呢?比如，我们再次来到科克岛，第二座刀刃桥被称为正在建造的刀刃桥。在波兰还有一个。 Blades can also be used for garden furniture. So I think the possibilities could be endless. There are many, it's just trying to make sure that we move from those niche applications to bigger scales and scaling up those niche applications to become more the norm. And from the wind industry's interest, I think their interest is actually to extend the life of the wind farm. So, that would be the preferred option, but also to look at opportunities for repurposing because those are the main areas of experimentation being looked at.