Siemens Gamesa to supply 132 RecyclableBlades to RWE’s Sofia offshore wind project
Siemens Gamesa’s industry-leading and multi-award-winning RecyclableBlade has reached another important milestone, having been selected by RWE for 44 SG 14-222 DD offshore wind turbines to be installed at the Sofia offshore wind power project off the east coast of the UK.
In 2022, RWE became the first commercial, large-scale offshore developer to install Siemens Gamesa’s fully RecyclableBlade, with a number of blades being utilized in the Kaskasi offshore wind power project located 35 km north of the island of Heligoland in the German North Sea. The Sofia project will utilize RecyclableBlades measuring 108 meters long, representing the first deployment of this variant. The Kaskasi project utilizes 81-meter-long RecyclableBlades on the selected SG 8.0-167 DD offshore wind turbines.
Utilizing Siemens Gamesa’s RecyclableBlade technology enables the full reclamation of the blade’s components at the end of the product’s lifespan: the resin, fiberglass, and wood, among others, are separated using a mild acid solution.
During JEC World 2022, Siemens Gamesa received the JEC Composites Innovation Award, in Renewable Energy category for its RecyclableBlade, in partnership with Aditya Birla Advanced Materials.
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The RecyclableBlade offers the same high quality and lifetime Siemens Gamesa is known for. After decommissioning, the blade can be recycled by dissolving the matrix under mild acidic conditions, thus preventing unnecessary landfill. The reinforcements, core materials, plastics and metal parts can be easily recovered in good quality and value. The matrix is recovered as thermoplastic material with an interesting profile of properties. The recovered matrix and reinforcement can then be reused in appropriate applications.
The key benefits of the RecyclableBlade are low-energy demanding recycling process, reduces life cycle impacts, lowers end-of-life costs, leaves no waste, only resources and easy to adopt, designed for long blades
“Our industry-leading RecyclableBlade technology is now delivering even greater circularity of resources. When we began working with RWE on the Kaskasi project, we knew that we had taken the first major steps toward delivering a decisive change to the wind sector. Having the opportunity to produce and install 132 RecyclableBlades for the Sofia project is a remarkable achievement. It fully demonstrates the joint focus between our companies to develop and deliver even greater levels of sustainability for renewable power generation globally,” said Marc Becker, CEO of Siemens Gamesa’s offshore business.
The blades will be manufactured at Siemens Gamesa’s Hull factory, which built the first RecyclableBlades for the Kaskasi offshore wind power project.
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