World's Tallest Wooden Wind Turbine Starts Turning (bbc.com) 32
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: According to Modvion, the Swedish start-up that has just built the world's tallest wooden turbine tower, using wood for wind power is the future. "It's got great potential," Otto Lundman, the company's chief executive, says as we gaze upwards at the firm's brand new turbine, a short drive outside Gothenburg. It's 150m (492ft) to the tip of the highest blade and we are the first journalists to be invited to have a look inside. The 2 megawatt generator on top has just started supplying electricity to the Swedish grid, providing power for about 400 homes. The dream of Lundman and Modvion is to take the wood and wind much higher. On the horizon near the Modvion project, several very similar-looking turbines are turning. Steel, not wood, is the key material for them, as it is for almost all of the world's turbine towers. Strong and durable, steel has enabled huge turbines and wind farms to be constructed on land and at sea. But steel is not without its limitations, particularly for projects on land. As demand has grown for taller turbines that harvest stronger winds with larger generators, the diameter of the cylindrical steel towers to support them has had to grow too. In a world of road tunnels, bridges and roundabouts, many in the wind industry say getting those huge pieces of metal to turbine sites has become a real headache, in effect limiting how tall new steel turbines can be.
From the outside, there is little obvious difference between the Modvion wooden turbine and its steel cousins. Both have a thick white coating to protect them from the elements and blades made primarily from fiberglass attached to a generator, which produces electricity when it turns. It is only when we go inside the tower that the differences becomes clear. The walls have a curved raw wood finish, not unlike a sauna. The 105m (345ft) tower's strength comes from the 144 layers of laminated veneer lumber (LVL) that make its thick walls. By varying the grain of each of the 3mm-thick layers of spruce, Modvion says it has been able to control the wall's strength and flexibility. "It's our secret recipe," says company co-founder -- and former architect and boat builder -- David Olivegren, with a smile. [...] Lundman and Olivegren tell me their turbine's big selling point is that, by using wood and glue, towers can be built in smaller, more easily transported modules. That will make it much easier to build really tall towers, they say, and to take the pieces to challenging locations.
However, Dr Maximilian Schnippering, head of sustainability at Siemens Gamesa -- one of the worlds largest turbine manufacturers -- says more pieces are likely to mean more trucks, more people and more time to complete the installation. He considers the modular system "an advantage" and that wooden towers can "nicely complement" steel towers. [...] Though wind power is cheaper and cleaner than almost all other forms of electricity generation, making steel involves extremely hot furnaces and almost always the burning of fossil fuels. That means CO2 emissions -- the main driver of climate change. Modvion says using wood instead of steel eliminates the wind turbines' carbon footprint entirely, making them carbon negative. That's because the trees take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere when they are alive and, when they are chopped down, the carbon is stored in the wood. As long as the wood doesn't end up rotting or being burned, the carbon is not released. About 200 trees went into Modvion's turbine tower. They were the same species -- spruce -- that is used for Christmas trees and the company says they are farmed sustainably, meaning when they are harvested more are planted. Modvion hopes to build another even taller turbine soon with plans to open a facility that will produce 100 wooden modular turbines a year in 2027. "The industry is currently putting up 20,000 turbines a year," Lundman says. "Our ambition is that in 10 years time 10% of those turbines -- about 2,000 -- will be wooden."
From the outside, there is little obvious difference between the Modvion wooden turbine and its steel cousins. Both have a thick white coating to protect them from the elements and blades made primarily from fiberglass attached to a generator, which produces electricity when it turns. It is only when we go inside the tower that the differences becomes clear. The walls have a curved raw wood finish, not unlike a sauna. The 105m (345ft) tower's strength comes from the 144 layers of laminated veneer lumber (LVL) that make its thick walls. By varying the grain of each of the 3mm-thick layers of spruce, Modvion says it has been able to control the wall's strength and flexibility. "It's our secret recipe," says company co-founder -- and former architect and boat builder -- David Olivegren, with a smile. [...] Lundman and Olivegren tell me their turbine's big selling point is that, by using wood and glue, towers can be built in smaller, more easily transported modules. That will make it much easier to build really tall towers, they say, and to take the pieces to challenging locations.
However, Dr Maximilian Schnippering, head of sustainability at Siemens Gamesa -- one of the worlds largest turbine manufacturers -- says more pieces are likely to mean more trucks, more people and more time to complete the installation. He considers the modular system "an advantage" and that wooden towers can "nicely complement" steel towers. [...] Though wind power is cheaper and cleaner than almost all other forms of electricity generation, making steel involves extremely hot furnaces and almost always the burning of fossil fuels. That means CO2 emissions -- the main driver of climate change. Modvion says using wood instead of steel eliminates the wind turbines' carbon footprint entirely, making them carbon negative. That's because the trees take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere when they are alive and, when they are chopped down, the carbon is stored in the wood. As long as the wood doesn't end up rotting or being burned, the carbon is not released. About 200 trees went into Modvion's turbine tower. They were the same species -- spruce -- that is used for Christmas trees and the company says they are farmed sustainably, meaning when they are harvested more are planted. Modvion hopes to build another even taller turbine soon with plans to open a facility that will produce 100 wooden modular turbines a year in 2027. "The industry is currently putting up 20,000 turbines a year," Lundman says. "Our ambition is that in 10 years time 10% of those turbines -- about 2,000 -- will be wooden."
End of Life? (Score:4, Interesting)
I'd be keen to see a life-cycle analysis of this approach. All that glue doesn't spring into existence out of nowhere - it's almost certainly derived from fossil fuels. And I do wonder about the end of life. A steel tower can be broken down and recycled - steel is one of the most readily recyclable materials humans use. Recycled steel has a drastically lower carbon footprint than new-from-ore steel. With a wooden tower, I think the only path is to break it up, then either burn or bury it. Burying is enticing, because that can lock away that carbon, possibly forever (with all the glue in the lamination, I doubt it would rot). But it's hard to look at a landfill and think: yes, that's the solution!
What I'd really like, though, is for someone to figure out a reasonable end of life plan for the mountains of fiberglass turbine blades. It's a trickle of waste material now, but will become a torrent in a few decades.
Re: End of Life? (Score:4, Informative)
Fiberglass blades are already a torrent today and they just go to the landfill. Treated wood isnâ(TM)t a good thing for the environment either, you canâ(TM)t burn it, you canâ(TM)t bury it without poisoning the ground and this thing is the worse of all, combination of plasticizers, poisons and wood product.
For a moment I thought they actually built a wooden windmill, you know, like mills did hundreds of years ago, but no, this is basically a plastic/fiberglass construction with some wood sprinkled in. Making a wooden structure that tall and strong enough to withstand the powers of nature isnâ(TM)t easy.
Re: (Score:2)
They can probably use a reduction reaction to render the waste into char and harvest the arsenic for future wood treatment. That's assuming they even use extra arsenic, since some suppliers only use water and azole for pressure-treated lumber. Not sure if the plasticizers would behave well.
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Wind turbine blades can definitely be recycled, it's just cheaper to put them in a landfill.
https://electrek.co/2023/02/08... [electrek.co]
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If it can't be done economically (even in theory), it should not be considered recyclable. If such things are counted, literally everything is "recyclable".
These two ideas don't really make sense together. The economics of recycling always depends on the cost of alternatives. Currently, it's economical to throw away old blades and buy new ones because throwing away old blades is cheap. That is something which could easily change, or be changed. And that is true about most things.
The exception is when recycling something produces more waste than the object itself. Then there is no way for that to be economical. (barring some edge case with unusual materials)
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Recycling something like fiberglass produces more waste than the object it was. Almost all recycling produces more waste and you end up with an inferior product at the end. What you say is logically inconsistent.
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I don't follow your train of thought here.
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Fiberglass blades are already a torrent today and they just go to the landfill.
Not anymore. It was only ever a question of time and working recycle processes (for making more blades, not some downcycling) are now available. I guess you have to find another bogus argument.
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Again, you make statements without backup or proof. Working recycling processes do not exist, or else they would be used.
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this is basically a plastic/fiberglass construction with some wood sprinkled in
The fiberglass is just the turbine blades. These are significant, but not the largest part. And I don't know what you mean by plastic. The coating on the outside? The glue? Yeah both of those probably contain polymers, but the body of this thing is essentially extremely thick plywood. Which is almost entirely wood, just like the name suggests.
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Plywood is not what I would consider 'construction wood', it's compressed wood chips and glue, in this case more plastics and glue than your average home depot plywood to make sure it doesn't start to instantly rot.
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I had a laugh at this particular statement...
So I guess the trees just harvested themselves, right? No fossil fuel guzzling equipment was used in any way to harvest and process the trees?
Right.
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Re: (Score:2)
I had a laugh at this particular statement...
So I guess the trees just harvested themselves, right? No fossil fuel guzzling equipment was used in any way to harvest and process the trees?
Right.
It doesn't matter, because wood as a magick wand to go carbon negative just doesn't happen unless you sequester it. It does get released eventually. The Carbon cycle is rather long.
And yes, the devices used to prepare the wood do contribute carbon, just like the devices to mine and process Uranium ore into fuel for reactors, and the devices used to process and build the nuclear power plant all contribute quite a bit of CO2.
People have little understanding of things like the carbon cycle, and how at th
Re: End of Life? (Score:3)
A company this year unveiled a circular recycling process to break down the turbine blades, returning them to their previous materials so new blade can be made out of the same materials. It even works for blades that are already in landfills. Neat stuff!
https://www.vestas.com/en/medi... [vestas.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Thanks for the link. Interesting stuff.
On the process itself:
"The results have just been published in the leading scientific journal Nature, and Aarhus University, together with the Danish Technological Institute, have filed a patent application for the process. Specifically, the researchers have shown that by using a ruthenium-based catalyst and the solvents isopropanol and toluene, they can separate the epoxy matrix and release one of the epoxy polymer's original building blocks, bisphenol A (BPA), and fu
Still not biodegradable (Score:2)
At first I thought this was about trying to solve the fiberglass trash problem by using wood that could be more properly disposed of, but it sounds like the blades still use the same materials, it's just the tower that's wood which isn't going to be a big environmental savings. Renewable energy is going to become its own type of problem as we have generations of trash build up from these materials we use to generate it. Maybe not the same urgency as global warming, but we do need to figure out how to recy
Re:Still not biodegradable (Score:4, Funny)
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it's just the tower that's wood which isn't going to be a big environmental savings
We don't know whether there is or not because we don't know a) what the environmental impact of the glue is and b) whether the mast will still be useful for something at the end of its lifespan holding up a turbine.
A lot of energy typically goes into making the mast, if that comes mostly from sunlight through photosynthesis then it could be a large savings indeed.
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Bury it and lock up even more carbon.
Currently the popular goal is less CO2 in the atmosphere. Try to keep up.
Just bury large quantities of the same type of stuff in the same places and future generations might mine them for resources.
Anyone notice the carbon footprint chart? (Score:2)
Did anyone else notice the carbon footprint chart in the fine article? I did. It is a chart from the UN Economic Commission for Europe.
Here's a link to that image.
https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/... [bbci.co.uk]
I didn't submit the article to Slashdot for consideration. I had no part in getting this data presented. There is no means by which I could have cherry picked this data. Though I suspect someone somewhere will try to claim there is some reason to not trust a chart that shows nuclear fission as having lower CO2
CL160, rise from the grave (Score:2)
Haul the towers with heavy lift airships.
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That approach has failed, failed and failed again.
Epoxy (Score:2)
Wood and epoxy are an incredibly strong combination,
first used by German scientists.
But epoxy is very, very nasty stuff. Stay well away
from the fumes.
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Wood and epoxy are an incredibly strong combination,
first used by German scientists.
But epoxy is very, very nasty stuff. Stay well away
from the fumes.
Indeed.
And the Germans then learned you could make high strength, light weight monocoque wooden constructions when these started dropping bombs on them - the DH98 Mosquito!
Interestingly, Kurt Tank, who designed the FW190, produced the TA-154 Moskito - a German version of the wooden Mosquito. The performance was not as good as expected and then the RAF bombed the glue factory ...
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_Uncured_ epoxy is (not very) nasty stuff. Once it cures, it is innert.
But did they consider mitigation for termites? (Score:2)