Of wind turbine blades or EV batteries. Why? the answer is, it is not commercially viable.
Currently no Lithium Ion batteries are recycled in Australia with CSIRO saying 90% are stored at warehouses, in America that figure is 95%. Wonder what happens when just a single battery among thousands stored in the same building, spits the dummy and catches fire?
Included is a pic of a Texas storage yard for turbine blades the piles are about 3mtrs high.
-- Edited by peter67 on Tuesday 30th of April 2024 09:23:27 AM
They are stored because they will be recycled when the volumes are high enough.
There is no fire risk from flat batteries.
Besides, there are much more serious recycling issues than a few wind turbines and EV batteries, like 56 million tyres every year of which only half get a new life.
Cheers,
Peter
Gundog said
11:06 AM Apr 30, 2024
Peter_n_Margaret wrote:
They are stored because they will be recycled when the volumes are high enough. There is no fire risk from flat batteries. Besides, there are much more serious recycling issues than a few wind turbines and EV batteries, like 56 million tyres every year of which only half get a new life. Cheers, Peter
I think your wrong Peter, they are being recycled eg I have 2 mats in the annex made from recycled rubber, which were brought from Bunnings,
Possum3 said
11:37 AM Apr 30, 2024
As an aside; the dining tables and chairs in the Mt Molloy Pub are recycled tyres - look great but heavy as hell, need two people to move chair closer to table.
There are many used/recycled tyres out in the bush from garden ornaments to shoe treads, etc.
I use them on my property staked to ground in gullies with star pickets to stop erosion.
.Neighbour uses them stacked for growing potatoes - Plant in bottom tyre filled with earth, when it grows to top of earth, she stacks another tyre on top, and so on - when ripe she knocks over the stack and picks up the potatoes, no digging required. Many farmers paint them white, stick on corner posts to assist pilots when crop dusting
Peter_n_Margaret said
11:58 AM Apr 30, 2024
Gundog wrote:
Peter_n_Margaret wrote:
They are stored because they will be recycled when the volumes are high enough. There is no fire risk from flat batteries. Besides, there are much more serious recycling issues than a few wind turbines and EV batteries, like 56 million tyres every year of which only half get a new life. Cheers, Peter
I think your wrong Peter, they are being recycled eg I have 2 mats in the annex made from recycled rubber, which were brought from Bunnings,
Australians discard around 56 million car tyres a year
27 million of those tyres aren't recycled
Yes, there are a few things made from recycled tyres, but they are a miniscule %.
An even bigger problem is the tyre material that get worn. Probably 200,000 tons of powdered plastic per year just in Australia.
Tyres are made from plastic, not rubber these days and that 200,000T is micro plastic and finishes up in the rivers and oceans.
We should be getting upset about that and not worrying about a few wind blades and batteries just yet.
Cheers,
Peter
Are We Lost said
12:07 PM Apr 30, 2024
Peter_n_Margaret wrote:
They are stored because they will be recycled when the volumes are high enough.
Maybe that is what these places that store all the blades are saying, but who is going to pay for the recycling? It sounds like a profit making scam to me .... rake in the disposal fees now, but when the time comes the business will not find the money to recycle them.
Update, September 25: General Electric filed a lawsuit last week claiming that Global Fiberglass Solutions has failed to fulfill its promise to recycle thousands of blades. GE says it paid the company $16.9 million to recycle about five thousand wind turbine blades, but that GFS instead stockpiled them at facilities in Swee****er and Iowa. Only after GFS took millions of dollars from GE, did GFS all but shut down its operations without recycling the Blades, reads the complaint, filed in U.S. district court in New York.
That is a cost of about US$3,300 per blade yet apparently that was still not enough to make it viable.
Craig1 said
01:53 PM May 1, 2024
So it is ok to knowingly stockpile a relativley new product, wind turbines and lithium batteries ?
Why not look for a solution first, instead of burning something almost every day.
Peter_n_Margaret said
02:10 PM May 1, 2024
Do you want to add nuclear medicine and 1,000 other things to that list?
Cheers,
Peter
Of wind turbine blades or EV batteries. Why? the answer is, it is not commercially viable.
Currently no Lithium Ion batteries are recycled in Australia with CSIRO saying 90% are stored at warehouses, in America that figure is 95%. Wonder what happens when just a single battery among thousands stored in the same building, spits the dummy and catches fire?
Included is a pic of a Texas storage yard for turbine blades the piles are about 3mtrs high.
-- Edited by peter67 on Tuesday 30th of April 2024 09:23:27 AM
There is no fire risk from flat batteries.
Besides, there are much more serious recycling issues than a few wind turbines and EV batteries, like 56 million tyres every year of which only half get a new life.
Cheers,
Peter
I think your wrong Peter, they are being recycled eg I have 2 mats in the annex made from recycled rubber, which were brought from Bunnings,
There are many used/recycled tyres out in the bush from garden ornaments to shoe treads, etc.
I use them on my property staked to ground in gullies with star pickets to stop erosion.
.Neighbour uses them stacked for growing potatoes - Plant in bottom tyre filled with earth, when it grows to top of earth, she stacks another tyre on top, and so on - when ripe she knocks over the stack and picks up the potatoes, no digging required. Many farmers paint them white, stick on corner posts to assist pilots when crop dusting
Maybe that is what these places that store all the blades are saying, but who is going to pay for the recycling? It sounds like a profit making scam to me .... rake in the disposal fees now, but when the time comes the business will not find the money to recycle them.
Here is a snippet about that
Update, September 25: General Electric filed a lawsuit last week claiming that Global Fiberglass Solutions has failed to fulfill its promise to recycle thousands of blades. GE says it paid the company $16.9 million to recycle about five thousand wind turbine blades, but that GFS instead stockpiled them at facilities in Swee****er and Iowa. Only after GFS took millions of dollars from GE, did GFS all but shut down its operations without recycling the Blades, reads the complaint, filed in U.S. district court in New York.
That is a cost of about US$3,300 per blade yet apparently that was still not enough to make it viable.
Why not look for a solution first, instead of burning something almost every day.
Cheers,
Peter