Wind Blade Composite Project From ORNL Wins Green Design Innovation Award

Newswise — Researchers from the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory were recently honored with a prestigious ACE Award for Composites Excellence by the American Composites Manufacturers Association. The team won the “innovation in green composites design” prize for creating a fully recyclable, lightweight wind turbine blade tip that incorporates low-cost carbon fiber and conductive coating for enhanced protection against lightning strikes. 

The award recognizes a composite product that demonstrates the greatest innovation for reducing its environmental footprint or extending its life cycle. ACE Winners were announced at the tenth annual Composites and Advanced Materials Expo, or CAMX, in San Diego.

“This one award encompassed three different technologies from ORNL: We made the blade with ORNL’s low-cost carbon fiber, treated it with a conductive coating we developed and designed it to be 100% recyclable,” said ORNL researcher Vipin Kumar, who led the project. 

The wind blade tip and its low-cost carbon fiber were created in DOE’s Carbon Fiber Technology Facility. Incorporating a recyclable thermoset epoxy resin with multiple layers of carbon and glass fiber, the blade tip is 41% lighter for greater efficiency at capturing energy to generate electricity. After the turbine blade’s normal life cycle, the fabrics within can be fully recovered, leaving only a polymer residue which can be used in new products. 

“This project is another fantastic example of the innovative thinking coming from our composites research,” said Yarom Polsky, director of the Manufacturing Science Division at ORNL. “The relatively simple approach for breaking down and collecting the resin for reuse, while keeping the fiber largely intact, addresses many of the current challenges to recycling blades that are conventionally manufactured.”

To easily integrate the technology with existing manufacturing processes, researchers used industry-standard equipment and methods, demonstrating a path toward even greater sustainability for the wind industry. Researchers developed a final conductive coating added to the blade exterior, which makes the blade surface more resistant to lightning strike damage. 

“This project demonstrates the versatility and potential of our low-cost carbon fiber to support the circular economy, in this case helping connect enhanced turbine blade performance with the environmental benefits of wind energy,” said Merlin Theodore, who leads the Advanced Fiber Manufacturing group at ORNL, which was integral to the project.

Theodore added that the innovative ideas could only be carried out because of the combined expertise and effort of technicians, post-doctoral researchers and skilled research professionals. Subhabrata Saha acted as technical lead for the ORNL project team, which also included Vlastimil Kunc, Ahmed Arabi Hassen, Josh Crabtree, Gary Vance, Jake Helton, Dexter Nelson and Julian Charron. The project was funded by the Advanced Materials and Manufacturing Technologies Office within DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.

This was the seventh CAMX award for Kumar, who led ORNL researchers to win the headlining Combined Strength Award in 2022 for an additive manufacturing compression molding technology that has since been licensed by Orbital Composites. Kumar was also a member of a team led by Halil Tekinalp which won an “Outstanding Technical Paper” award at this year’s expo for “Multiplexing Extrusion System Development for Increased throughput, Flow Accuracy and Improved Microstructure.”

UT-Battelle manages ORNL for the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States. The Office of Science is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit energy.gov/science.