Intelligently recovering and recycling balsa wood
Monday, March 2, 2020 - 10:40
in Physics & Chemistry
There are 30,000 wind turbines in operation in Germany, many of which are starting to age. In 2019, 2000 rotor blades had to be discarded; in 2024, this figure will shoot up to 15,000. But where to put these up to 90-meter-long, 15-metric-ton behemoths? Researchers from the Fraunhofer Institute for Wood Research, Wilhelm-Klauditz-Institut, WKI have a solution: they used a new recycling technique to recover and process the balsa wood contained in the rotor blades into, for instance, insulation mats for buildings.