Essay by Eric Worrall
h/t Dr. Willie Soon; According to Michigan State University professor John Dorgan, making wind turbine blades out of edible resin would allow them to be recycled as food.
Wind turbine blades could be recycled into gummy bears, scientists say
Researchers design composite resin for blades that can be broken down to make new products including sweets
Chelsie Henshaw
Tue 23 Aug 2022 19.11 AESTThe next generation of wind turbine blades could be recycled into gummy bears at the end of their service, scientists have said.
Researchers at Michigan State University have made a composite resin for the blades by combining glass fibres with a plant-derived polymer and a synthetic one. Once the blades have reached the end of their lifespan the materials can be broken down and recycled to make new products including turbine blades – and chewy sweets.
Wind power is one of the dominant forms of renewable energy. However, turbine blades, usually made of fibreglass, can be as long as half a football field and cause problems with disposal, with many discarded in landfills when they reach the end of their use cycle.
…
“We recovered food-grade potassium lactate and used it to make gummy bear candies, which I ate,” said John Dorgan, one of the authors of the paper.
…
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/aug/23/wind-turbine-blades-could-recycled-gummy-bears-scientists
There is a small problem with this plan, if you expose edible plastic to an outdoor environment, or sometimes even an indoor environment, it tends to get eaten. One of the most extreme cases I personally witnessed, when I tried to start my hobby lathe a few years ago, nothing happened. I opened the gearbox housing and discovered something had eaten the rubber off my drive belt – all that was left was the string reinforcing.
Still I guess the recycled wind turbine gummy bears will add welcome variety to our future diet of edible insects and green party politicians.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
“Ever eat a wind turbine? Many parts are edible.”—Euell Gibbons
The cost of recycling the resin could not possibly be cheaper than producing a gummy bear from fresh ingredients.
Another waste of somebody’s money to pay for this rubbish.
Surely there is a tax credit for that. The Wind Mill Blade Nay Edible Gummy Bear and Inflation Reduction Act.
If, after its useful life is over, a thing is fit only for indefinite burial for decomposition, it is NOT renewable.
Send them to the governor of Arizona, they can use them instead of shipping containers!
The land grant schools will not be outdone in stupidity.
“Dominant form of renewable energy” Kind of like the best female on a team of transgenders.
“Soylent Green is people!”
From the 1973 film “Soylent Green,” which was set in the year 2022 (!). A broad, drumbeat focus on recycling. Green New Deal. Global collapse. Wind turbine blades into candy. 2022.
https://youtu.be/8Sp-VFBbjpE
You can’t fix stupid!
Maybe they should start using licorice instead of lithium to make EV battery packs?
“combining glass fibres with a plant-derived polymer and a synthetic one. Once the blades have reached the end of their lifespan the materials can be broken down and recycled to make new products including turbine blades – and chewy sweets.”
Cue the lawsuits when someone finds a bit of glass in their gummy bears.
Society is overcome with the organic fad and hypersensitive to any chemical in their food or even the lining of the food containers (BPA for example) and this clown researcher is recommending people eat recycled stuff.
At best this is a biodegradable blade – yet one of the biggest problems with wind turbines, after power storage requirements, is that they don’t last as long as they should and the blades in particular degrade quickly and lose their aerodynamic efficiency, especially offshore turbines battered by windswept salt spray.
Why is the media full of this “environmentally friendly” junk tech announcements? Why don’t they divert some of the vast resources they have for “fact checking” any skeptical opinion, to b.s. checking stuff like this – surely any green minded person would be embarrassed and annoyed at such crap that patronizes people concerned about the environment.
It upsets the dogma.
Your dogma upsets my catma.
@ur momisugly Eric W – I don’t think green party politicians are edible.
Just a tiny taste of them or their policies is toxic.
combining glass fibres
umm…
I realize they said break down and separate, but I still wouldn’t be willing to risk it.
Who would want to eat a gummy bear made from an eatable resin that’s been contaminated with 20-years worth of bugs, birds and dirt? The FDA would never approve the sale of those gummy bears.
Bugs, birds, and dirt are good for your diet! Haven’t you been following the science?
But I guess we all have to be worried about the fact that the blades will have been soaking for decades in a fluid with 400ppm CO2 – that might be dangerous!
If they make the blades elastic enough they may flap in wind and maybe even fly away!
Overlooking of course that anything made from fiberglass and resin is mostly fiberglass. The resin is just a binder. What does one do with all that fiberglass?
Hmm. Long pig roast, side of baked cricket, and fiberglass infused gummy bears for dessert.
Nah, I think I’ll stick with my current Labor Day plans…
Well, edible wind turbine blades could certainly be a source of fiber(glass) in everyone’s diet.
🙂
Somehow, gummy bears from spent wind turbine blades just strikes as a Bad Idea™.
It’s like trying to establish a nudist colony in Antarctica because there’s no one around. That’s another Bad Idea™.
Or you can just stop making windmill blades, problem solved.
Having served in the military I will tell you that if these things were installed in a warm, humid environment the various species of fungus would begin to attack it immediately. It would have mold and mushrooms and everything else growing out of it. Nature will find nutrients and use them. That is even before the bugs and birds get to it. Mold will begin probably within 24 hours.
I doubt they made any foodstuffs from their resins after 10-20 year exposure to sunlight, oxygen, heat, moisture, large diurnal variation, bacterial degradation.
The synthetic foods claim is concerning, since they did not mention original sources.
“plant-derived polymer” should excite many… Maybe XR and other terrorists can use it to glue themselves to roads and doors. Perhaps, they can chew on their own manacles.
Now that sounds like product from a process that is 100% dependent on hydro, nuclear or fossil fuel energy generation.
Make the out of wood and we can burn them to keep warm when the wind isn’t blowing.
Figures someone from that State up North would have such a stupid idea. Go Buckeyes!!!
“We recovered food-grade potassium lactate …”
So?
What percentage of the blades would be “food-grade potassium lactate”?
That still leaves most of it to end up in landfills.
(Along with the “gummies” that almost nobody will buy.)
What? Buy? Won’t they be pushing these FREE, like the jabs?