Avangrid, a member of the Iberdrola Group, has announced that it recently donated 300 pounds of decommissioned wind turbine blades to WindLoop, a startup comprising students at Yale University, to test a process for blade recycling. The donated turbine blades came from Avangrid’s Baffin wind farm in Kenedy County, Texas, USA.
WindLoop’s strategy includes two parts. It incorporates an on-site blade shredder, which has been shown to reduce transportation costs from wind farm to recycling facility. The company has also developed a process, using green chemistry principles, to effectively separate the fibres and resin in blades. WindLoop’s solution can recover over 90% of turbine blade material and 97% of the overall value of the turbine blades. WindLoop’s team comprises four students at Yale School of the Environment in Connecticut, near Avangrid’s company headquarters.
