While wind turbine components such as gearboxes, hubs and towers are composed of metal and can be recycled as scrap at the end of the product life cycle, recycling the turbine’s blades — which are composed of glass fiber, carbon fiber and epoxy resin — has proven almost impossible.

As such, the team sought to transfer the high strength and corrosion resistance properties of turbine blades onto urban constructions. This was accomplished by using a combination of physical crushing and chemical treatments to incorporate the turbine blade components into cement and asphalt mixtures, the researchers explained.

Once created, the mixtures were trialed on a small stretch of the Qingfu Highway in Lanzhou in Gansu province in Northwest China where they showed promising results. Specifically, that section of highway did not show any cracks or material detachment even after five months of usage.