Carbon Footprint Reduction by Repurposing Fibre-reinforced Plastic (FRP) Composite Waste for Marine Renewable Energy

The project aims to reduce the carbon footprint of decommissioning composite structures by repurposing the fibre-reinforced plastic, in particular the waste from wind turbine blades. This helps environmental management, mitigation of climate change and reduction of greenhouse gases and emissions. The marine plastic waste disposal and assessing the impact

on marine ecosystems is timely. A particular focus of the project is to explore and quantify the positive impacts of the reuse of wind turbine blades on the marine ecosystem by reducing carbon emissions. This waste management not only improves further development of the marine renewable industries by providing relatively cheap recycled material but

also helps marine ecosystems by reducing the release of waste in the environment. Also, this project improves the sustainability of decommissioning by ensuring that the energy used to develop components will be utilised fully at the end of their life while reducing greenhouse gases and emissions. This will mitigate climate issues and help decarbonisation

by reducing the carbon footprint and having a more sustainable process. As the early wind farms are coming to the end of their fatigue design life, decommissioning sustainably is about to become a significant problem. The objective of this research is to investigate the recycling opportunities and find suitable and sustainable solutions to reuse thousands

of wind turbine blades.