China3D printingNet November 5th, researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) have developed a new method of manufacturing wind turbine blades that can improve their performance and scrap recycling rate.
Instead of using ordinary thermosetting resin to make the blade, the team designed a unique setting that uses thermoplastic for 3D printing, which can then be heated to restore its original polymer for reuse. Putting their method into practice, engineers have managed to create a 13-meter-long prototype, and in the future, they believe that this process can bring cost and speed benefits to manufacturers.
Part of a 13-meter thermoplastic blade prototype by NREL researchers. Photo from NREL Rui’an Beach.
“Revolutionary” blade design
Currently, many utility-scale wind turbine blades have a similar clamshell design, in which two glass fiber “skins” are bonded together with an adhesive and reinforced with shear webs. However, these large parts are often produced with thermosetting resins such as epoxy, polyester, and vinyl ester, and once cured, they are irreversibly cross-linked in a way that makes the plastic unusable.
Derek Berry, the NREL project leader, explained: “Once you produce a blade with a thermosetting resin system, you cannot reverse the process.” “This makes the blade difficult to recycle.” More importantly, according to According to NREL itself, in the past 25 years, the process may have been adjusted to improve efficiency, but the actual changes are very small, so the way the turbines are built does not conform to its image of sustainable development.
Given that earlier this year, President Biden set an ambitious goal of reducing U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by half by 2030, and emphasized that “green energy technology” is essential to achieve this goal, NREL researchers have now Determine the need to “completely change” how wind turbine blades are made. “
NREL’s CoMET has an impact
To make blade production more circular, Berry and his team started a project with colleagues at NREL Composites Manufacturing Education and Technology, or “CoMET” facility. The complex opened in 2017, specializing in promoting the research and development of wind energy, hydraulic power and composite technology, providing users with 3D printing tools, composite hybrid equipment and prototype tools.
As far as Berry’s project is concerned, the project is supported by the Office of Advanced Manufacturing of the U.S. Department of Energy, and he and his team have successfully developed a system capable of processing recyclable thermoplastics. These can then be used to print more circular blades, which can be connected to other parts by thermal welding, without the need for the usually toxic and expensive adhesives in the process.
By shifting from traditional manufacturing methods to 3D printing, the multidisciplinary team is also able to produce more advanced blades, which have a highly engineered mesh structure with different densities and geometric shapes between the “skins”, which can be used by themselves. Thermoplastic resin system injection.
“With two thermoplastic blade components, you can combine them and connect them by applying heat and pressure. You can’t do this with thermoset materials.”
Using their novel setup, Berry and his team have been able to build a 13-meter-long thermoplastic prototype in NREL’s CoMET facility, which takes full advantage of these 3D printing-related advantages.
In cooperation with partners TPI Composites, Additive Engineering Solutions, Ingersoll Machine Tools, Vanderbilt University and Advanced Composite Manufacturing Innovation Institute, the researchers believe that it is possible to reduce the weight and cost of turbine blades by 10% in the future, and their Delivery time has been shortened by 15%, and lightweight components up to 100 meters in length have been developed.
In addition, when NREL’s research was funded earlier this year, it was supported by two sub-funded projects that were also investigating the potential of 3D printed turbine blades. Although Colorado State University is currently researching fiber-reinforced composite materials for creating new internal blade structures, GE Research is developing a full-scale 3D printed blade tip for structural testing.
GE’s Haliade-X offshore wind turbine blades (pictured) will now be manufactured using large 3D printed molds. The photo is from GE.
AM enhanced clean energy
As the world begins to turn to offshore energy solutions in response to the global climate crisis, a lot of research is now devoted to making wind turbines themselves more environmentally friendly. Engineers at McGill University and Ryerson University have developed a method to convert wind turbine blade waste into a new 3D printable PLA, capable of producing fiber-reinforced parts.
Earlier this year, the University of Maine also received $2.8 million in federal funding to support its development of an environmentally friendly 3D printing process for turbine blade molds. Also supported by Ingersoll Machine Tools, just like the NREL team’s project, UMaine’s research focuses more on the use of bio-based raw materials, which can cut the cost of manufacturing large parts in half.
At the same time, in Germany, Fraunhofer IGCV and voxeljet have set out to expand the scale of 3D printed wind turbine blades instead of focusing exclusively on improving their circularity. To achieve this goal, the two organizations are developing an “advanced casting cell” that can produce the molds required to cast General Electric Haliade-X turbine components, each weighing up to 60 tons.
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