REFRESH partner Gees Recycling discusses the project’s objectives to recycle wind turbine blades in a new video published by Composites Lounge.

Two men talking.

Giorgio Betteto from Gees Recycling and Ilkay Özkisaoglu of Composites Lounge discuss recycling of wind turbine blades.

In the interview Ilkay Özkisaoglu of the Composites Lounge online community speaks to Giorgio Betteto, R&D CTO of composites recycling specialist Gees Recycling.

The interview took place on the booth of REFRESH partner the European Composites Industry Association (EuCIA) during the recent JEC World 2024 composites show in Paris.

Transforming wind blades into new products

As part of the REFRESH project Gees Recycling’s role in the REFRESH project focuses on the design of a new line for processing end-of-use wind turbine blades. This is going to be built at the company’s site in Aviano, Italy.

Giorgio Betteto explains how the REFRESH project will transform used wind blades into different products using Gees mechanical recycling technology, as well as other technologies the project is developing.

“It’s a project that will lead to recover 5000 tons a year of wind blades in our plant, plus many others with different technologies. And the aim’s to transform a problem into a resource and to make also a demonstration on industrial scale on what is possible to obtain from such large composite waste like wind blades.”

“The results may be applied to many other large dimension composite waste like coming from yachts … and so on.”

WATCH THE VIDEO on YouTube

The REFRESH concept

Gees is leading Work Package (WP) 2: Development and customisation of recycling processes, and WP 4: Process integration, demonstration and testing at TRL 7.

In the REFRESH concept, various recycling options are being considered and so in addition to the Gees mechanical recycling process, Gjenkraft is developing its pyrolysis process, and CIRCE is exploring the potential of microwave-assisted thermal and solvothermal processes.

WP 2 is focusing on the design and upscaling of the Gees mechanical recycling process and Gjenkraft thermal process and the design of thermo-chemical recycling processes. The main objective of WP 4 is the building and testing of the upscaled mechanical recycling and pyrolysis plants.