Retired wind turbine blades are becoming a growing waste challenge as older turbines reach the end of their operating lives, but a Tennessee company is developing a way to recover valuable material from them instead of sending the blades to landfill. Carbon Rivers, a Knoxville-based advanced materials company, uses a heat-based process to separate glass fibre from the polymers and resins that hold turbine blades together. The US Department of Energy has reported that the company achieved 99.9% purity in recovered glass fibre, creating the possibility of using the material again in products such as composite panels, construction materials and 3D-printing filament. The technology has received millions of dollars in federal support and research collaboration with the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Rather than treating an old blade as waste, the process aims to turn its materials into feedstock for new manufacturing.
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