Gees mechanical recycling plant under construction

The new press for the REFRESH production line.

Construction of the REFRESH mechanical recycling demonstration plant at Gees Recycling’s factory in Aviano, Italy, is well underway. In Gees’ patented process composite materials recycled from decommissioned wind turbine blades will be combined with resin and press-moulded at high pressure to produce rigid panels.

The current production line at the Aviano plant is capable of recycling more than 1900 tons of various composite materials per year. This additional line will increase capacity to more than 7000 tons/year.

A key component of the new panel production line is a new 5.5 m x 1.3 m 6400-ton hot press. This has been successfully tested at the supplier’s site and will be dismantled for transport to Gees. The floor of factory has already been reinforced ready for its installation.

The distribution system for the press has been delivered. Installation will require nearly 1000 m of cable.

The new plant also includes new systems for air filtration, weighing, conveying, and storage, a mixing system and a resin handling line, control system, and CNC finishing system.

A red vehicle moving a piece of equipment in a factory.

The distribution system for the press.

Equipment installation, commissioning, testing and fine-tuning will continue through August and September.

In parallel, Enecolab is continuing to optimise its thermochemical process for recovering value from the dust and fines produced during the blade processing steps. This will convert these materials that cannot be recycled into syngas and inert residual solids. The company is developing both lab-scale and full-scale prototypes, using syngas to preheat the material to reduce energy demand.

Industrial recycling solution

Together, Gees and Enecolab are working toward the full-scale demonstration of an industrial recycling solution with advanced panel moulding and finishing. The goal is to validate the composite panel production process at TRL7.

The panels produced have a wide range of potential applications in the construction industry and other markets. Working with CETMA, leader of activities to develop new products using the secondary raw materials from the REFRESH processes, Gees is currently evaluating the mechanical performance of four types of panel. One promising configuration ꟷ a glass fibre composite sandwich panel ꟷ is already being used to develop a formwork system for concrete applications.