World’s First All-Timber Wind Turbine Blades are Cheaper, Recyclable, Fire-Resistant and Stronger than Carbon Fiber
World’s First All-Timber Wind Turbine Blades are Cheaper, Recyclable, Fire-Resistant and Stronger than Carbon Fiber
This isn't a case of pay more to waste less; the mass-timber, blades cost around 20% less than carbon fiber and can build taller towers.
Fire resistant? You know what can't catch fire? Wood.
Its also just a bunch of thin layers of wood glued together, so recyclable is also kinda bullshit. Stronger that carbon fiber is also questionable. Garbage article in general, it doesnt touch on any of these points.
20% cheaper is probably not good enough for more than 20% less performance output. A heavy blade can stand up, but be less responsive to wind force. They can still be recyclable by melting the glue/veneering, or just made into particle/OSB board.
So this "article" is just a regurgitation of a press release by the company making them. Cool. Cool, cool, cool.
Intriguing, but I find this somewhat hard to believe.
Glu-lam isn't new technology.
If you could achieve comparable strength: weight from timber as aluminium, GFRP, or CFRP, we'd see a high timber content in aircraft, instead of near zero.
If they're making the blades heavier to compensate, you get all kinds of runaway knock on effects. Blades are heavier, so need to be stronger, so need to be heavier... tower, bearings, foundations, mountings etc all need to be stronger.
Sort of an xkcd 808 argument.
With the right wood you can achieve similar levels of strength/weight with wood as aluminum, but the volume is much bigger, so you often only see small aircraft made of wood. However, there are multiple issues of working with wood, the grain can significantly alter it's properties, only very specific species can be used, requires pieces to be glued together in a very specific manner and the process of validating it for aircraft use is very complicated as well.
Source: studied airspace engineering
i mean i could certainly see timber used in some capacity, it works in regular buildings after all, but i don't see how it would make sense in the blades..
They do make wind turbine towers out of wood in many places. Transportation advantages to it. Weight is non issue.
They have been using wood for windmill blades for hundreds of years
I wonder what the weight difference is.