18 October 2015, 15:56
Today, wind energy covers about ten percent of the electricity requirements in Germany. However, besides the "development of wind energy" the energy sector has to also increasingly deal with the issue of "recycling of disused wind turbines". Mostly for economic reasons in Germany it is not worth it to operate the equipment for more than 20 years.
In the field of recycling and processing of obsolete wind turbines, solutions must be developed. So there is a second hand market for these disused wind turbines. Well-maintained equipment from Germany are still operated, for example in Poland, Russia or Kazakhstan.
But even this market is limited and it raises the question of how to recycle the wind power plants to dispose this material into the recyclable material chain. But the dismantling of a wind turbine is similarly complex as the set up. The rotor blades must be removed before the tower can be dismantled step by step. In this process many materials can be recycled. The heavy rotor blades, which mainly consist of glue, glass or carbon fiber, however, cause problems. Due to the size and the nature of the material the shredding is difficult.
The CFK Valley Stade Recycling GmbH & Co. KG is already, for many years, dealing with the shredding of carbon fibers. So in summer 2015 in cooperation with HAMMEL Recyclingtechnik GmbH they started to shred disused wind turbines. The wind turbines were precomminuted using scissors before being shredded with the HAMMEL primary shredder VB 750 D. Here an end product size of about 250 mm was achieved. The VB 750 D is multi-talented and convinces with many capabilities. An enormous throughput, low energy consumption, a user-friendly handling with the IFM control and an increased tilting hopper for better material flow complete this machine.
The shredded material can be further processed and finds its use as an alternative fuel for cement production.