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Wind turbine blades End of Life through Open HUBs for circular materials in sustainable business models

Project description

DEENESFRITPL

A circular economy strategy for wind turbine blades

Circular economy strategies can reduce waste and greenhouse gas emissions by extending product lifespan and lowering resource consumption. In the case of wind turbines, one of the biggest sources of renewable energy, the implementation of a circular economy at the end-of-life stage has been challenging. The EU-funded EoLO-HUBs project will address this issue by bringing together stakeholders, academics and specialists from across Europe to develop and set up efficient circular economies for wind turbine blades. They will create three open hubs where key actors can co-develop novel technologies, plans and organisational structures necessary to implement circularity.

Objective

A sustainable Circular Economy in the wind sector requires to solve the End of Life problematic of the Wind Turbine Blades, prioritizing environmental factors and fairly sharing the efforts to overcome the technologic, economic and social barriers among all the key actors. To this end, EoLO-HUBs will develop 3 open hubs to co-design, co-create and demonstrate new technologies, organizational structures, business models and legal recommendations to implement CE according to the needs of the different European regions.

The Knowledge Hub will connect stakeholders to effectively collaborate on similar initiatives, sharing data and spilling over good practices to replicate success stories during and after the project. The other 2 hubs will build a large-scale demonstration covering the full value chain for WTB reusing and recycling from the dismantling to the valorisation in heavy composite sectors through efficient waste recycling solutions, while specific needs of EoL composites in wind technology are representing.

The Onshore Hub will include the necessity of implementing a Zero-pollution and mobile system for dismantling onshore technologies without jeopardise the environment and maximising the recovering of paints and coatings as well as enabling the recyclability of chemical building blocks (solvolysis).

The Multi-sectorial and Offshore Hub will include the necessity of adapting current high volume composite recycling technologies (pyrolysis) to obtain a high yield of rGF and cGF in a Zero-waste approach collaborating with other sectors as well as to demonstrate how to prepare the gateways for offshore technologies to connect to the new value chain for recycling WTB.

In this way, EoLO-HUBs will create a long-term collaboration of key actors with access to relevant demonstration scenarios to ensure the recycling of almost 90% of the WTB materials, creating a circular economy that generates jobs and reduce greenhouse gas emission by 2030.

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Call for proposal

HORIZON-CL5-2022-D3-01

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Funding Scheme

HORIZON-IA - HORIZON Innovation Actions

Coordinator

FUNDACION AITIIP
Net EU contribution
€ 1 826 875,00
Address
POLIGONO EMPRESARIUM, CALLE ROMERO N 12-14
50720 Zaragoza
Spain

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Region
Noreste Aragón Zaragoza
Activity type
Research Organisations
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Total cost
€ 1 826 875,00

Participants (14)

Partners (3)

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Last update: 4 May 2023

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Permalink: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101096425

European Union, 2024