Team Re-Wind USA, a Tech-based research team, was declared one of the winners of the United States Department of Energy’s (DoE) Wind Turbine Materials Recycling Prize. The team — part of the multinational Re-Wind Network. which focuses on wind turbine blade reuse — received a cash prize of $75,000 alongside an invitation to compete in the next phase of the competition.
Re-Wind was one of 20 teams selected as winners of the “Initiate!” phase of the prize, introduced by the Biden-Harris administration in 2023 to meet the country’s decarbonization goals by 2050. These teams will then look to demonstrate their technologies at scale for the “Accelerate!” phase, in which six teams aim to win $500,000 and work with DoE labs.
The Technique spoke to Russell Gentry, ARCH professor and one of the founders of Re-Wind, as well as student members Sakshi Kakkad, Cayleigh Nicholson, Gabriel Ackall, Yulizza Henao-Barragan and Aeva Silverman.
Henao-Barragan, fifth-year graduate CE, spoke about the problem that the team addressed.
“Windmills have a design life — blades typically last about 25 years. In the US, a lot of wind farms started reaching end of life about five years ago. Blades are made of composite materials that are hard to recycle,” Henao-Barragan said. “Our team decided to repurpose blades, with minimal modification and create new infrastructure with them — bridges, poles, barriers and so on.”
The Re-Wind Network is a collaboration between universities in the US, Ireland and Northern Ireland. The consortium also includes BladeBridge, an Ireland-based company that constructed the first bridge using repurposed LM13 windmill blades. The network formed due to a unique grant partnership in 2016 from the National Science Foundation (NSF).
Silverman, fourth-year ENVE, works primarily on mapping software for infrastructure planning. She spoke about the way the team’s role in the initiative has evolved since she joined in 2021.
“When I joined, the team’s focus was more structural. Torsional and loading tests, ripping blades apart and determining material properties were our priorities. The most important research now is about how to make it happen. We need to design catalogs to showcase our ideas and manage future trends in repowering decision making processes — related to taxes and local politics,” Silverman said.
While the team liaises with academics, engineers and sociologists in Europe, a major part of the Re-Wind design and modeling was done at Tech. Kakkad, fourth-year CS, spoke about her focus on modeling and simulation and Re-Wind USA’s contributions in that regard.
“Re-Wind provides digital twin modeling. We have the 3D geometry of the blade and the numeric data — we use composite lay-up and calculate structural properties of the blade. It’s a little challenging because blade data is often proprietary. We sometimes have to recreate our data using point cloud scans and bits and pieces which we can get from companies that share data,” Kakkad said.
Re-Wind primarily works in the Digital Fabrication Lab (DFL), whose main component is a 13,000 square-foot high bay shop with various machines for cutting and fabrication. The team uses foam and wood to create templates for their designs, high-pressure water jets for cutting complex shapes and structural tools for testing different spots on the blade. At the time of the interview, a 50-ft blade part weighing about 7,000 lb was present in the lab’s premises for testing the supporting structures the team was developing.
“From a structural perspective, Tech faculty and connections of the Institute have given us advice. We have connections within GTRI [Georgia Tech Research Institute] too. And of course, we have the DFL — which is one of the main ways Tech helps us,” said Ackall, third-year CE, who focuses on structural engineering on the team.
The team is optimistic about beating their competitors to the prize. Kakkad said…
This article was originally published by a nique.net . Read the Original article here. .