Circular economy strategies chart.

Circular economy strategies.

The REFRESH project is mainly focused on recycling and repurposing strategies (end-of-life – EoL – approach), but the eco-design approach is also being applied to a wide range of re-manufactured products from EoL wind blades. Among these new products other components for wind energy sector are being considered.

Italian research and technology organisation CETMA is leader of Work Package 6: Circular by Design, which focuses on the project’s design for circularity strategy and life cycle assessment (LCA) activities. As part of this work CETMA is developing the REFRESH eco-design strategy.

 

Eco-design guidelines

During the first year of the project, CETMA has been working on formulating circular eco-design guidelines for the manufacturing of new products based on secondary raw materials resulting from the REFRESH recycling processes. The focus has been on three main areas: concept design, design for recycling, and design for disassembly.

1. Concept design 

Diagram life cycle of wind bladesCreation of the initial concept of new products with potential high market demand, exploiting the recycling/repurposing technologies deployed within the project.

The new end-products will be developed in the second phase of the project, which starts in July 2024.

2. Design for recycling

Selection of low-impact materials, to be used together with recycled materials from EoL wind blades, to further reduce the environmental impact of the new products.

State of the art (SoA) and commercial analysis is focusing on novel resins with higher recyclable potential in respect to traditional thermosetting resins:

  • reactive thermoplastics;
  • vitrimers;
  • cleavable epoxies.
3. Design for disassembly

Innovative joining solutions to facilitate disassembly of the new products at EoL.

The focus has been on debondable adhesives that have recently been developed with the ability to be activated by temperature. Debondable adhesives based on thermally expanded particles are to date at the higher stage of technology readiness and will be explored in the next phase of the project.

And finally, other recycling procedures are under preliminary evaluation as an alternative to the REFRESH processes.