Some Recycling Updates for the Composites Industry – Wind Turbine Blades

#composites, #sustainability, #recycling, #fibers, #resins, #windenergy

This week I thought I would give everyone some updates in the composite recycling business, primarily because it seems like every time I open a new feed from Composites World or any other composites news feed, there is always an article about something having to do with the burgeoning business of recycling composites – especially when it comes to used wind turbine blades. 

Case in point, there is a short news article in last week’s Composites World (6/13/2025 issue) about the company that I have written about several times – Composite Recycling of Ecublens, Switzerland.  It seems that this company has inked a deal with Owens Corning to integrate their recycled glass fiber into Owens Corning’s existing glass fiber production lines.

Original Material (left), after thermolysis treatment (center), and after calcination cleanup (right)

The plan of these two companies is to scale up the production of the recycled glass fiber from Composite Recycling’s thermolysis process to provide a reliable high volume raw material input stream for Owens Corning’s fiberglass business.  This is actually the first time that I have seen a true industrial scale recycling effort getting underway that looks to have all the right pieces in place to be very successful. 

And that’s just the first things I saw.  In another partnership announced in the 6/11/2025 Composites World, Toray Netherlands, Daher (Paris), and Tarmac Aerosave (also Paris) have announced an end-of-life thermoplastic composite recycling program for commercial aircraft parts.  These companies are working with Airbus to recycle non-structural thermoplastic composite parts from aircraft interiors and other non-structural parts like fairings into new thermoplastic composite parts primarily for the aircraft industry.  Essentially taking the old interior of an Airbus aircraft and recycling that material into new interior parts, fairings, door panels, etc. 

Airbus A30 Pylon Cover made using Toray Cetex carbon fiber reinforced PPS

And, in an even bigger announcement, the Department of Energy released a report in January of this year that outlines recommendations that could increase the recycling and reuse of end of life wind turbine blades in the U.S.  The major finding in this report is that up to 90% of the material from wind turbine blades can and should be recycled for use either in the wind turbine industry or other industries that can make use of recycled composite materials.  And they have initiated a new $20M program funded by the Infrastructure and Jobs Act that aims to close the gap on the remaining 10% that are more difficult to recycle.  That program is funded and the assessment by the DOE is that the United States can have in a very short span of years a completely domestic wind energy industry with domestic materials, components, design, manufacture, installation, and maintenance.  This program has the potential to solve one of the biggest challenges we have today of being a completely energy independent nation.  If we have sufficient numbers of wind turbines sited in areas that have consistent winds, it is possible that wind energy could provide base load electricity throughout much of the nation. 

To put an even finer point on this, there is a May 28, 2025 article from Globe News Wire (https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2025/05/28/3089721/0/en/Onshore-Wind-Turbine-Scrapping-and-Recycling-Market-to-Reach-2-5-Billion-by-2034-Growing-at-8-5-CAGR-Exactitude-Consultancy.html) reporting on a study by a UK Consultancy that the onshore wind turbine scrapping and recycling market which is a $1.2B market today (2024) will reach $2.5B by 2034.  This article cites four market drivers that this consultancy expects will be the driving force to reach this level:

(1)   Sustainability initiatives – the global push toward sustainability in the energy industry is pushing the need for responsible management of end of life wind turbine blades.  The unsightly stacks of used wind turbine blades in Texas, Iowa, and parts of the UK are finally catching up to the industry – potentially because they are very visible.

(2)   Technological Innovations – I have written about several of these, but companies like Composite Recycling, and the PECAN resin and plant-based carbon fiber systems developed by NREL and being commercialized by Trillium/Solvay/Syensqo are good examples of what this report is referring to.

(3)   Circular Economy Practices – Stakeholders in this industry, be they utilities, turbine manufacturers, and even rate payers, are increasingly looking to the industry to adopt a circular rather than linear economy approach to their overall business. 

(4)   Regulatory Pressure – this is more prevalent in the EU and UK than it is in the US, but even the US is beginning to come around – at least at the state and local level if not the National level with the current administration.  That too will change in a short span of years and the US will catch up with the rest of the developed world in this regard. 

This report also mentions the challenges that we all know exist to this endeavor, namely the typical market challenges of some high costs of some of the recycling strategies and the lack of a ready market for the recycled product.  This has obviously been solved by companies like Composite Recycling, but that model needs to be repeated over and again worldwide before this market can really explode. 

The other challenge that this report outlines is one that I have also talked about but needs mentioning again.  That is that there are no standards for recycled composite fiber or recycled resin and until there are some internationally accepted standards that everyone can point to and demonstrate that their product meets, the industry will be held back somewhat. 

All of that is coming, and there are moves afoot in a number of regulatory bodies, mostly in Europe, but also some here in the US that are drafting up standards for these materials.  So, it won’t be too many years before these standards are published and companies can get their products certified to them.  That will really open up the recycled composite market.

That’s about it for this week.  As always, I hope everyone that reads these posts enjoys them as much as I enjoy writing them.  I will post this first on my website – www.nedpatton.com – as then on LinkedIn.  And if anyone wants to provide comments to this, I welcome them with open arms.  Comments, criticisms, etc. are all quite welcome.  I really do want to engage in a conversation with all of you about composites because we can learn so much from each other as long as we share our own perspectives. 

My second book truly is a roadmap to a circular and sustainable business model for the industry which I hope that at least at some level the industry will follow.  Only time will tell.  I’ve included the approved cover at the end of this post as a preview of what is coming.  Let me know whether or not you like the cover.  Hopefully people will like it enough and will be interested enough in composites sustainability that they will buy it.  And of course I hope that they read it and get engaged.  We need all the help we can get. 

Finally, I still need to plug my first book, so here’s the plug.  The book pretty much covers the watershed in composites, starting with a brief history of composites, then introducing the Periodic Table and why Carbon is such an important and interesting element.  The book was published and made available last August and is available both on Amazon and from McFarland Books – my publisher.  However, the best place to get one is to go to my website and buy one.  I will send you a signed copy for the same price you would get charged on Amazon for an unsigned one, except that I have to charge for shipping.  Anyway, here’s the link to get your signed copy:  https://www.nedpatton.com/product-page/the-string-and-glue-of-our-world-signed-copy.  And as usual, here’s a picture of the book.