disposing of wind turbine blades

[NHSleddog]

Asbestos is also cancerous but a whole industry has thrived from the safe removal and disposal of it.

I am not saying it is an easy task (otherwise we would already have a solution), but it is an industry that is wide open and a company that can break them down safely will have the potential make a lot of money. It will also save space in landfills because I believe the internals of those blades are hollow. If a company can find a way to recycle them then they will have the potential to make even more because then landfills can start refusing them like they do tires leaving them only one option for recycling.

The main problem is you are left over with contaminated materials worth nothing. Actually a liability. Mostly sand and resins at the end of the day. Cheaper/easier to bury them.

The asbestos argument is the opposite of this. They REQUIRE that multi-million dollar industry to handle the poison in the product. These blades as an assembly can be handled fine with no special concerns and then bury them.

 

[SidecarFlip]

Best way to 'recycle' tires is after dark when the smoke isn't visible....

 

[NHSleddog]

Best way to 'recycle' tires is after dark when the smoke isn't visible....

Imagine if the environmentalists realized we burn a ton of tires to make coke from coal for steel production. I can imagine heads exploding.

 

[SidecarFlip]

The Holcim cement plant in Dundee (now closed) used to take all the tires they could get to use as added fuel in their cement kilns. The steel belts inside melted and mixed with the limestone. No smell, no smoke at 4000 degrees (f).

Now, tires are shredded here in Michigan and mixed with aggregate and bitumen and applied to roads as 'fortified' blacktop. Supposedly, the rubber makes the blacktop (hot top in your neck of the woods) last longer.... (debatable in my view, our roads are crap).

 

[Howling]

Asbestos is also cancerous but a whole industry has thrived from the safe removal and disposal of it.

I am not saying it is an easy task (otherwise we would already have a solution), but it is an industry that is wide open and a company that can break them down safely will have the potential make a lot of money. It will also save space in landfills because I believe the internals of those blades are hollow. If a company can find a way to recycle them then they will have the potential to make even more because then landfills can start refusing them like they do tires leaving them only one option for recycling.

The linked article does reference a company, Global Fiberglass Solutions that is starting to breaking down the blades and making pellets and fiberboard.

 

[GreensvilleJay]

best place to dispose of them wind turbine blades is to shove,er, store, them up the azzes of the azzholes that forced them onto us ! They've NEVER made back what they cost......

 

[BigG]

I read an article awhile back about someone donating a windmill to a university so the university could produce their own power. The unit worked for a short while but the cost of operating the windmill was greater then cost of the electricity it replaced. The university could not afford to dismantle the windmills because of the environmental impact costs to dispose of the mill.


Thank goodness they went green.

 

[SidecarFlip]

best place to dispose of them wind turbine blades is to shove,er, store, them up the azzes of the azzholes that forced them onto us ! They've NEVER made back what they cost......

Same deal with 'solar farms'. Farm my azzhole. All a solar farm does is take cropland out of production.

 

[BigG]

Same deal with 'solar farms'. Farm my azzhole. All a solar farm does is take cropland out of production.

Why can't they build the solar farms over the parking lots and let the cars set in the shade. A win win.

600+ acres of land just to build these low set solar panels make no sense. They are to low for animals to graze under. Thus they need to be mowed. They are to high to maintain without some type of lift. Why not build them on top of the new buildings? There are hundred of acres of blacktop parking lots that could be covered with minimal increase in the cost of the poles to hold up the panels.

Plus they are ugly and hot. You can watch the heat waves rise up over panel fields. I have been to several of them here in Fl. All but one that I have been to are way off the beaten path. I am sure they have reduced the values of the land next to them.

 

[sheepfarmer]

Same deal with 'solar farms'. Farm my azzhole. All a solar farm does is take cropland out of production.

Only if they're stupid enough to put them on good cropland. There is a DTE array along the 96 freeway on a hillside facing south, useless for anything but maybe grazing sheep, but they could still do that under the panels to keep the grass down. In Europe where good farmland is in short supply they've gotten creative with making use of land for multiple purposes. Agree it is sacrilege to take good cropland and make it unusable by paving it over, building houses on it, or even solar panels.

 

[Tarmy]

Out here, the schools are all getting into the solar power game. Hell, they can’t run the schools and now they want to save money by being energy generators!

To prove how stupid it is...in a school near me they just installed 3.5 m in panels to save 40k a year. The bonds are 20 year bonds and the debt payments are more than the 40k a year and they have to maintain and demo them too.

 

[sheepfarmer]

Why can't they build the solar farms over the parking lots and let the cars set in the shade. A win win.

600+ acres of land just to build these low set solar panels make no sense. They are to low for animals to graze under. Thus they need to be mowed. They are to high to maintain without some type of lift. Why not build them on top of the new buildings? There are hundred of acres of blacktop parking lots that could be covered with minimal increase in the cost of the poles to hold up the panels.

Plus they are ugly and hot. You can watch the heat waves rise up over panel fields. I have been to several of them here in Fl. All but one that I have been to are way off the beaten path. I am sure they have reduced the values of the land next to them.

Actually MSU and a couple other places have covered the parking lots with solar panels on varying shaped carport racks. Other than you get dripped on walking out from under, they are nice, shade in the summer and keep some of the snow off in winter. They are cantilevered from central pillars so the snow plows can go under in the winter. Those asphalt parking lots were acres of heat in the summer anyway.

 

[SidecarFlip]

They are planning on building a 1000 acre solar 'farm' near us in Deerfield Township, taking 1000 acres of prime cropland out of production. My question is, besides the crop loss, what about 25 years down the road when the panels are no longer viable (panels lose 1% of their output per year on the average), who will dismantle 1000 acres of panels and how will they be disposed of?

My even bigger issue is, when the sun don't shine, no juice produces and the sun don't shine everyday around here. Like I said, farm my ass.

 

[sheepfarmer]

They are planning on building a 1000 acre solar 'farm' near us in Deerfield Township, taking 1000 acres of prime cropland out of production. My question is, besides the crop loss, what about 25 years down the road when the panels are no longer viable (panels lose 1% of their output per year on the average), who will dismantle 1000 acres of panels and how will they be disposed of?

My even bigger issue is, when the sun don't shine, no juice produces and the sun don't shine everyday around here. Like I said, farm my ass.

Yup not a good use of resources.