Aug 2 2010
Himfr.com, one of China's leading B2B search platforms with more than 30 B2B industry websites to its name, reports that composite material recycling has broad prospects.
Composite material is playing a new and important role in China's national economy, as it is found in use in energy, transportation, chemical, power and other fields as an indispensable material.
In the automobile industry, composite materials are recycled mainly through incineration; through thermal degradation to recover oil and combustible gas; by physical grinding methods to re-use generated glass fiber, filler and resin mixture and other methods. The physical crushing method is the most economical and convenient recycling technology that has been widely recognized and adopted.
In the wind power industry application and recycling methods for fan blades, especially offshore wind turbines, is still in its infancy. Therefore, the wind power industry has yet to develop sufficient removal, separation and processing of composite materials and may need more than 20 years time for proper development.
Existing methods of disposal of waste fan blades include through landfills, incineration or recycling. The use of landfills is becoming outmoded in many countries, but is massive in China, being the country with the most landfills worldwide.
With fan blade size and numbers growing, the next 15-20 years will see a lot of waste for disposal, and the wind industry will face the challenges of recycling and developing new materials.
At present, the main adopted recycling methods are, United States-based chemical recycling methods and Japanese particle recovery methods. In the future, the direction for China's domestic composite materials recycling development will be to learn from foreign experience. Using state-provided policy support, the recycling problem in China should be alleviated, and the promotion of sustainable development should be widespread across all industries.