U.K. wind turbine blade recycling project, PRoGrESS, commences

A pioneering new U.K. project, PRoGrESS, is now underway to develop what is said will be Britain’s first wind turbine blade recycling pilot plant. The £2 million, three-year project, part-funded by Innovate UK and industry partner Aker Offshore Wind (Lysaker, Norway), seeks to deliver a circular model for wind turbine blades to support the U.K.’s climate change targets. Led in Scotland, it will benefit the wider U.K. economy and create green jobs.

Project partners met for two days at the University of Strathclyde’s (Scotland) Advanced Composites Group (ACG) facilities and at the Lightweight Manufacturing Centre (LMC, Renfrow, Scotland), a specialist center within the National Manufacturing Institute Scotland (NMIS) Group, as work starts on the three-year project. The project is overseen by Composites UK (Berkhamsted, U.K.), with the expertise of researchers at the University of Strathclyde, the LMC, University of Nottingham (U.K.), SUEZ recycling and recovery in the U.K., composites distributor GRP Solutions (Portsmouth) and composite part manufacturer, Cubis.

Project PRoGrESS aims to commercialize a method developed by the University of Strathclyde, separating glass fiber and resin components in composites to recover the glass fiber component, which can then be reprocessed, molded and reused (see “European partnership drives forward novel process development for GFRP recycling”).

“Through this project, we are looking forward to supporting the wind sector’s approach to net zero,” Zhe Liu, sustainability lead at the LMC, says. “Our knowledge and skills bring benefits to the partnership along the whole supply chain, including sustainable design and manufacturing, remanufacturing & end-of-life [EOL] recycling.” Sarah Lord, sustainability projects delivery manager at Composites UK and Liu Yang, head of the ACG at the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, emphasize their own commitment to the project.

For more details about Project ProGrESS contact Composites UK via info@compositesuk.co.uk.