As more and more wind turbines are deployed, the industry is turning to a new wave of materials to ensure that the blades do not end up in landfills or incinerators.

Chairman Robert Tsai grew up in a poor village in the mountainous area of central Taiwan. He had to walk for more than two hours to bring home buckets of clean drinking water.

"This taught me the value of natural resources," Robert said. Every drop of water comes at a price.

He is now trying to transfer this lesson to the wind power industry to address a thorny issue of the surge in renewable energy: the powerful wind turbine blades are almost impossible to recycle. Robert's company, Swancor, is one of several global companies attempting to develop new products that imitate the physical properties of current blade materials but can be chemically recycled, enabling its energy-intensive components to be reused in other products. However, there are challenges in ensuring that the product takes root.

Every year, more turbines are installed around the world, and the size of the blades is constantly increasing to collect wind power more effectively. According to BloombergNEF, the lifespan of composite waste from retired blades is approximately 20 years and is expected to increase 20 times over the next two decades, reaching a peak of about 782,000 metric tons by 2044.

Compared with other industries such as construction and electronics, the wind power generation industry generates less composite waste. Approximately 90% of the turbines (including towers and other components) can be recycled because many of the components are made of steel. However, many companies are exploring how to reduce blade waste in a cost-effective way to achieve their sustainable development goals.

Swancor's Taiwan factory provides composite materials for blade manufacturing and other industries, giving us a glimpse of what the future looks like. The two-meter (6-foot) tall yellow frame can accommodate nearly 200 carbon fiber spools, each 2.5 kilometers (1.5 miles) long. A machine slowly pulls them together and immerses them in a thick, pale yellow resin mucus. The material solidifies after heat treatment and is uniformly subjected to pressure treatment until a thin black plate is formed.

This material is called carbon fiber composite material and is the key to the development of the wind energy industry. It is sturdy, lightweight and flexible, enabling manufacturers to produce blades longer than football fields and allowing turbines to generate more electricity at less cost. In many parts of the world, electricity generated by wind power is now cheaper than that from burning fossil fuels.

At least in terms of recycling, the problem lies in the pale yellow mucus. It is called thermosetting resin. Once it hardens, it is not easy to transform into a liquid form - think of trying to fry an egg. When the blades reach the end of their service life, the hardened resin makes the extraction and reuse of carbon fiber difficult, and the production of carbon fiber is both valuable and emission-intensive. Although a small number of leaves are reused for items such as Bridges and park benches, most of the leaves are chopped up and eventually end up in landfills or industrial furnaces.

It should be made clear that even without the recycling of blades, wind power generation is still much better for the environment than burning fossil fuels. But the industry is still seeking solutions to create a circular economy for turbines and end the public relations nightmare that unfolds whenever photos of old blades rotting in ditches spread.

"People criticize wind energy as' junk energy 'because the blades are not recyclable," said Chairman Robert Tsai. I didn't believe in and invested in our research and development work. A few years later, we succeeded. We changed the materials.

Swancor's innovation is a new type of resin called EzCiclo. Tsai said that it has the same physical properties as the resin currently in use, but it can dissolve in a special heated liquid, which the company calls CleaVER, allowing the fibers to be reused.

Swancor has established a demonstration recycling process at its factory in Taiwan. The company also has branches in Chinese mainland and Malaysia. Waste materials from the manufacturing workshop are sent into a large metal pot filled with liquid. When the composite material is penetrated by the solvent, the epoxy resin falls off from the expanded carbon fibers, and the resulting stew looks like black seaweed soup.

The mixture is then sent to a spinning machine to separate the fibers from the liquid. After purification, it can be used as raw material for the production of polyester. Then the fibers are dried, leaving behind bags filled with black carbon fiber lumps. These carbon fibers are soft enough to be used as fillers for teddy bears and are scattered throughout the factory workshop.

They are too short and have reduced strength to be reused in new wind turbine blades, but they can be reused to make a wide range of products, from car bumpers to camping tables. Aerospace waste is the main source of reusable carbon fiber. The global recycled carbon fiber market is expected to reach 278 million US dollars by 2028. According to BNEF, this is a relatively small figure compared to the $217 billion invested in wind energy last year. But this solution can save the industry thousands of tons of waste.

Swancor said that the carbon fiber composite material recycling process emits about 2 kilograms (4 pounds) of carbon dioxide per kilogram of recycled carbon fiber, while the emissions from producing raw materials exceed 55 kilograms. The company is still conducting a life cycle assessment with its client Goldwind Science & Technology to examine the impact of wind turbines made with its recyclable resin throughout their entire life cycle.