Engineers at the Canadian麦吉尔大学andRyerson University设法将损害环境的风力涡轮机垃圾变成了强大的新PLA 3D打印材料。
Using a mixture of mechanical grinding and pyrolysis, the team have been able to recycle a now-defunct wind turbine blade into a fine fiber powder. During summary testing, the blade’s remnants not only showed higher strength and stiffness than virgin fiberglass, but once integrated with PLA, they proved capable of yielding robust fiber-reinforced 3D printed parts.
“我们提出一个程序将回收glass fibers from end-of-life wind turbine blades into pure thermoplastic FDM materials,” said the team in their paper. “Our recycling system is expected to reuse a huge amount of turbine blade waste, leading to a major reduction in the landfill of dangerous and harmful blade materials.”
“The incorporation of recovered glass fibers in filaments will increase the reliability and strength of the components produced, thereby resulting in a broader application of FDM 3D printing.”
Wind turbine wastefulness?
通常，复合材料的高强度和刚度与重量比率使它们非常适合生产低碳足迹航空航天，军事和汽车零件。在风能领域也是这种情况，经常将玻璃纤维部署以增强基于复合的涡轮叶片，这将天然风产生的动能变成了环保的电力来源。
However, despite the clear eco-benefits of using wind rather than fossil fuels to generate energy, it’s less well-known that end-of-life turbine blades tend to be disposed of via landfill or incineration. Given that such blades are packed with inorganic ingredients, landfilling them can lead to the release of harmful gasses, while burning them is less detrimental to mother Earth, but also yields vast quantities of ash.
过去，研究人员研究了回收涡轮刀片废物的机械，热和化学策略，但到目前为止，没有证明没有证明可行。在这些技术中，机械方法被认为是最成熟的，但是它们通常会产生不及时的纤维纤维，而热解会导致炭化和基于化学的方法变得难以扩展。
Despite the issues that continue to inhibit the usability of recycled fibers, the Canadian team anticipates that turbine technology’s advances over the next 30 years will result in significant waste, and with blades continuing to be built unsustainably, they say that a new design practice is needed to turn reused materials into a valid commercial opportunity.
将刀片变成构建
据研究人员介绍,impr最好的方法ove both the business case and printability of recycled turbine parts is to integrate any resulting fibers with PLA filaments, for use with ever-popular FDM machines. To test their hypothesis, the team cut sections from a larger blade, before feeding them into a hammer mill grinder, which broke them into a resin powder.
Once sieved, the blade particles were mixed with molten PLA pellets at concentrations of 5-10% and extruded twice, yielding a 1.75 mm-diameter filament. In order to assess the performance of their material, the researchers then 3D printed it into ten samples with aPrusai3Mk2S system, doing the same with pyrolyzed fibers and conventional PLA as well.
Interestingly, the team’s analysis showed that their new material exhibited higher tensile strength than the pyrolyzed one, but the reverse could be said for stiffness, where the latter saw a rise of up to 70%. Both filaments also outperformed virgin feedstock in these areas, yet compared to ordinary PLA, the 10%-reinforced samples featured dramatically reduced ductility and strength.
该团队得出的结论是，由于其短纤维长度，他们的样品表现出相对较高的脆弱性，并且通过进一步的研究，有可能生产能够“获得加强3D印刷标本的拉伸特性”并解决的较长纤维材料，并解决the wider flaw in wind energy’s eco-friendly credentials.
该团队在论文中总结道：“与维珍纤维相比，这两种可回收的纤维，即地面和热解的纤维都具有更高的强度和刚度值。”“这表明从寿命末的风力涡轮机叶片中重复利用的玻璃纤维不仅是环保的解决方案，而且还是FDM 3D打印原料的竞争对手，由维珍玻璃纤维增强。”
AM的涡轮刀片应用
On the opposite end of the scale, rather than recycling turbine parts, 3D printing is now increasingly being used to create optimized blades and wind energy components. Earlier this month,Optomecwas awarded $500,000 by theUS Air Force Sustainment Centerto develop3D printing parametersfor repairing F-15 and F-16 jet engine turbine blades.
与此相类似，Siemens Energyhas developed anovel digital repair chain for 3D printingdirectly onto conventionally-manufactured gas turbine blades. Rather than using DED-based 3D printing, the company devised a unique LPBF process for the project, which enables various upgrades to be added onto blade tips as required.
With regards to wind energy specifically,GE研究has been awarded a project by theUS Department of Energy(DoE) to explore the design of3D printed wind turbine blades。During the program, the firm intends to work with several industry leaders to develop blade tips that are both cheaper and more readily available than standard spare parts.
研究人员的发现在其论文中详细介绍了“Experimental and analytical investigation of 3D printed specimens reinforced by different forms of recyclates from wind turbine waste。”这项研究由Mazin Tahir，Amirmohammad Rahimizadeh，Jordan Kalman，Kazem Fayazbakhsh和Larry Lessard合着。
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特色图像显示了一组GE风力涡轮机。通过GE的照片。
