The environmental impact of wind turbine blades

The first generation of wind turbine (WT) blades are now reaching their end of life, signalling the beginning of a large problem for the future. Currently most waste is sent to landfill, which is not an environmentally desirable solution. Awareness of this issue is rising, but no studies have fully assessed the eco impact of WT blades. The present study aims to provide a macroscopic quantitative assessment of the lifetime environmental impact of WT blades. The first stage has been to analyse global data to calculate the amount of WT blade materials consumed in the past. The life cycle environmental impact of a single WT blade has then been estimated using eco data for raw materials, manufacturing processes, transportation, and operation and maintenance processes. For a typical 45.2 meter 1.5 MW blade this is 795 GJ (CO2 footprint 42.1 tonnes), dominated by manufacturing processes and raw materials (96% of the total. Based on the 2014 installed capacity, the total mass of WTB is 78 kt, their energy consumption is 82 TJ and the carbon dioxide footprint is 4.35 Mt. These figures will provide a basis for suggesting possible solutions to reduce WTB environmental impact.China Scholarship CouncilThis is the final version of the article. It first appeared from the Institute of Physics via http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/1757-899X/139/1/01203

Wind turbine blade end-of-life options: an eco-audit comparison

Wind energy has developed rapidly over the last two decades to become one of the most promising economical and green sources of renewable energy, responding to concerns about use of fossil fuels and increasing demand for energy. However, attention is now turning to what happens to end-of-life wind turbine waste, and there is scrutiny of its environmental impact. In this study, we focus on one aspect of this, the blades. We analyse and compare end-of-life options for wind turbine blade materials (mainly glass fibre reinforced plastic and carbon fibre reinforced plastic) in terms of environmental impact (focusing on energy consumption), using our own data together with results gathered from the literature. The environmental impacts of each end-of-life option are discussed, looking at processing energy consumption, the recycling benefits and the effect of blade technology development trends. There is considerable variability in the results, and lack of consensus on predictions for the future. We therefore analyse the results using a range of different scenarios to show how the ‘optimal’ solutions are influenced by trends in blade composition and end-of-life process development. The most environmentally favourable process is dependent on whether the materials used for the blades are glass fibre composite or carbon fibre composite. The extent to which process improvement might affect the viability of different end-of-life processes has been assessed by looking at ‘crossover’ points for when the environmental impact becomes favourable. This analysis gives new insight into areas where research into process technologies could be targeted to enable significant end-of-life environmental benefits.China Scholarship Council Jesus College Cambridg

Sustainability assessment of a single-use plastics ban

Governments around the world are introducing single-use plastics bans to alleviate plastic marine pollution. This paper investigates whether banning single-use plastic items is an appropriate strategy to protect the environment. Product life cycle assessment was conducted for single-use plastic and single-use non-plastic alternatives. The life cycle impacts of the two product categories were compared and scaled according to EU consumption of 2016. The results show that a single-use plastics ban would decrease plastic marine pollution in the EU by 5.5% which equates to a 0.06% decrease globally. However, such a ban would increase emissions contributing to marine aquatic toxicity in the EU by 1.4%. This paper concludes that single-use items are harmful to the environment regardless of their material. Therefore, banning or imposing a premium price on single-use items in general and not only single-use plastic items is a more effective method of reducing consumption and thereby pollution. The plastics ban only leads to a small reduction of global plastic marine pollution and thus provides only a partial solution to the problem it intends to solve.</jats:p

From refining sugar to growing tomatoes: Industrial ecology and business model evolution

This article seeks to advance the understanding of the relationship between industrial ecology (IE) and business model innovation for sustainability as a means and driver of new value creation and competitive advantage by expanding the understanding of industrial symbiosis (IS) and internal symbiosis. This is explored through the case study of British Sugar, which, at the time of writing, is the UK's largest sugar producer by market share. Over the past three decades, the company has systematically sought opportunities to turn waste streams and emissions from their core production processes into useful and positive inputs to new product lines. Their core business is still sugar, but the business model has evolved to offer a broad range of additional synergistic and profitable product lines, including animal feed, electricity, tomatoes, and bioethanol. The research explores the temporal dimension of dynamic business model innovation, framing it in the context of a continuous evolutionary process rather than a discrete design activity. The case will be of interest as an additional contribution to the growing literature on IS; in offering an approach for linking the themes of IE literature and sustainable business model innovation more concretely in research and practice; and, by presenting the case as an evolutionary innovation process, the article furthers the emerging literature on business model innovation for sustainability.The authors gratefully acknowledge the extensive access to information and in-depth interviews made possible by British Sugar and AB Sugar in support of this case study. This article builds on initial work undertaken on SustainValue, a European Commission's 7th Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013). The authors gratefully acknowledge the funding support of the European Commission as well as the EPSRC Center for Innovative Manufacturing in Industrial Sustainability.This is the accepted manuscript of a paper published in the Journal of Industrial Ecology (Short SW, Bocken NMP, Barlow CY, Chertow MR, Journal of Industrial Ecology, 2014, 18, 603-618, doi:10.1111/jiec.12171). The final version is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/jiec.1217

Wind turbine blade waste in 2050.

Wind energy has developed rapidly over the last two decades to become one of the most promising and economically viable sources of renewable energy. Although wind energy is claimed to provide clean renewable energy without any emissions during operation, but it is only one side of the coin. The blades, one of the most important components in the wind turbines, made with composite, are currently regarded as unrecyclable. With the first wave of early commercial wind turbine installations now approaching their end of life, the problem of blade disposal is just beginning to emerge as a significant factor for the future. This paper is aimed at discovering the magnitude of the wind turbine blade waste problem, looking not only at disposal but at all stages of a blade's lifecycle. The first stage of the research, the subject of this paper, is to accurately estimate present and future wind turbine blade waste inventory using the most recent and most accurate data available. The result will provide a solid reference point to help the industry and policy makers to understand the size of potential environmental problem and to help to manage it better. This study starts by estimating the annual blade material usage with wind energy installed capacity and average blade weight. The effect of other waste contributing factors in the full lifecycle of wind turbine blades is then included, using industrial data from the manufacturing, testing and in-service stages. The research indicates that there will be 43 million tonnes of blade waste worldwide by 2050 with China possessing 40% of the waste, Europe 25%, the United States 16% and the rest of the world 19%.The authors would like to thank the Industrial Sustainability Research Group at the University of Cambridge and the industrial cooperation partners for advice and support. This work was supported, in part, by China Scholarship Council (CSC). The authors are also grateful to Jesus College, Cambridge for financial support

Potential reduction of carbon emissions by performance improvement: A cement industry case study

The cement industry is generally considered responsible for upwards of 5% of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. This is a result of the high energy intensity of the process, significant CO$_2$ release from the raw materials used, and large global consumption. It is also a high growth sector as emerging economies develop their infrastructure. This paper outlines an investigation into day-to-day performance variation that, if scaled to the global level, represents a potential for improvement of up to 100 Mt CO$_2$ equivalent per year. Optimising this operational variation is not included in current roadmaps for reduction of cement industry CO$_2$ emissions, and has the potential to be cost neutral, or even save money for cement producing companies. The paper analyses a case study of a plant in the UK, operating a pre-calciner type kiln commissioned in 1986. Production data was analysed to examine the day-to-day variation in the fuel-derived CO$_2$ emissions, in order to estimate the potential for operational improvement. Various factors were then analysed to determine what drives this potential improvement, including fuel mix, rate of production, and process airflow. The day-to-day performance of the plant, as measured by the fuel-derived CO$_2$ emissions per tonne of clinker produced, varied significantly. (Clinker is the material ground and mixed with ~3% gypsum to produce cement). Improvement of the plant to 10th percentile best observed performance levels would represent a 10% drop in CO$_2$ emissions and a 7% drop in energy consumption, with associated cost savings. Two mathematical models were used, first to examine the energy balance of the plant and then to predict CO$_2$ emissions from given input conditions. The largest source of energy consumption was the dissociation energy required to form clinker, however, the variation in this was small. Airflow and fuel type were found to dominate the variation of performance. Optimising the factors affecting performance was predicted to reduce energy consumption by 8.5% and CO$_2$ emissions by 19.5%. The paper concludes that there exists significant opportunity to reduce the emissions from cement plants by operational means, and that fuel mix and excess air ratio should be the focus of future research.Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (Grant ID: EP/K503009/1)This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from Elsevier via http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2016.06.15

Business Model Innovation for Sustainability: Towards a Unified Perspective for Creation of Sustainable Business Models

Business model innovation has seen a recent surge in academic research and business practice. Changes to business models are recognized as a fundamental approach to realize innovations for sustainability. However, little is known about the successful adoption of sustainable business models (SBMs). The purpose of this paper is to develop a unified theoretical perspective for understanding business model innovations that lead to better organizational economic, environmental and social performance. The paper examines bodies of literature on business model innovation, sustainability innovation, networks theory, stakeholder theory and product–service systems. We develop five propositions that support the creation of SBMs in a unified perspective, which lays a foundation to support organizations in investigating and experimenting with alternative new business models. This article contributes to the emerging field of SBMs, which embed economic, environmental and social flows of value that are created, delivered and captured in a value network. It highlights gaps for addressing the challenges of business model innovation for sustainability and suggests avenues for future research.This study was supported by the EPSRC project ‘Business Models for Sustainable Industrial Systems’ (grant no EP/L019914/1) and the EPSRC Centre for Innovative Manufacturing in Industrial Sustainability (grant no EP/I033351/1)

Mineral Preservatives in the Wood of Stradivari and Guarneri

Following the futile efforts of generations to reach the high standard of excellence achieved by the luthiers in Cremona, Italy, by variations of design and plate tuning, current interest is being focused on differences in material properties. The long-standing question whether the wood of Stradivari and Guarneri were treated with wood preservative materials could be answered only by the examination of wood specimens from the precious antique instruments. In a recent communication (Nature, 2006), we reported about the degradation of the wood polymers in instruments of Stradivari and Guarneri, which could be explained only by chemical manipulations, possibly by preservatives. The aim of the current work was to identify the minerals from the small samples of the maple wood which were available to us from the antique instruments. The ashes of wood from one violin and one cello by Stradivari, two violins by Guarneri, one viola by H. Jay, one violin by Gand-Bernardel were analyzed and compared with a variety of commercial tone woods. The methods of analysis were the following: back-scattered electron imaging, X-ray fluorescence maps for individual elements, wave-length dispersive spectroscopy, energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy and quantitative microprobe analysis. All four Cremonese instruments showed the unmistakable signs of chemical treatments in the form of chemicals which are not present in natural woods, such as BaSO4, CaF2, borate, and ZrSiO4. In addition to these, there were also changes in the common wood minerals. Statistical evaluation of 12 minerals by discriminant analysis revealed: a. a difference among all four Cremona instruments, b. the difference of the Cremonese instruments from the French and English antiques, and c. only the Cremonese instruments differed from all commercial woods. These findings may provide the answer why all attempts to recreate the Stradivarius from natural wood have failed. There are many obvious implications with regard to how the green tone wood should be treated, which chould lead to changes in the practice of violin-making. This research should inspire others to analyze more antique violins for their chemical contents

Measurement of the hadronic photon structure function F_{2}^{γ} at LEP2

The hadronic structure function of the photon F_{2}^{γ} (x, Q²) is measured as a function of Bjorken x and of the photon virtuality Q² using deep-inelastic scattering data taken by the OPAL detector at LEP at e⁺e⁻ centre-of-mass energies from 183 to 209 GeV. Previous OPAL measurements of the x dependence of F_{2}^{γ} are extended to an average Q² of 〈Q²〉=780 GeV² using data in the kinematic range 0.15<x<0.98. The Q² evolution of F_{2}^{γ} is studied for 12.1<〈Q²〉<780 GeV² using three ranges of x. As predicted by QCD, the data show positive scaling violations in F_{2}^{γ} with F_{2}^{γ} (Q²)/α = (0.08±0.02⁺⁰·⁰⁵_₀.₀₃) + (0.13±0.01⁺⁰·⁰¹_₀.₀₁) lnQ², where Q² is in GeV², for the central x region 0.10–0.60. Several parameterisations of F_{2}^{γ} are in qualitative agreement with the measurements whereas the quark-parton model prediction fails to describe the data

Measurement of the charm structure function F_{2,c)^{γ} of the photon at LEP

The production of charm quarks is studied in deep-inelastic electron–photon scattering using data recorded by the OPAL detector at LEP at nominal e⁺e⁻ centre-of-mass energies from 183 to 209 GeV. The charm quarks have been identified by full reconstruction of charged D* mesons using their decays into D⁰π with the D⁰ observed in two decay modes with charged particle final states, Kπ and Kπππ. The cross-section σ^{D*} for production of charged D* in the reaction e⁺e⁻→e⁺e⁻D*Χ is measured in a restricted kinematical region using two bins in Bjorken x, 0.00140.1 the perturbative QCD calculation at next-to-leading order agrees perfectly with the measured cross-section. For x<0.1 the measured cross-section is 43.8±14.3±6.3±2.8 pb with a next-to-leading order prediction of 17.0⁺²·⁹_₂.₃ pb