Chinese Cable-Cutting Patent, Blades in Coal Mines, LNG Ruling

This week we discuss Wyoming's plan to bury blades in sealed coal
mines, a Chinese patent that seems linked to subsea attacks, and a
ruling that threw out the possibility of train-transported
liquified natural gas in the US. Fill out our Uptime listener
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www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.com Allen
Hall: Wyoming gets creative with turbine blade recycling while
concerns mount over submarine cable security in European waters.
Plus, a federal ruling on LNG transport poses new challenges for
East Coast energy plants. This is the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast.
You're listening to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast, brought to you
by BuildTurbines. com. Learn, train, and be a part of the clean
energy revolution. Visit BuildTurbines. com today. Now, here's your
hosts, Allen Hall, Joel Saxum, Phil Totaro, and Rosemary Barnes.
Allen Hall: This is your last chance, everybody, if you're planning
on attending Wind Energy O&M Australia, which will be February
11th and 12th in Melbourne. You better get your tickets and do it
fast, because you need to go to WindAustralia. com. Now, Phil, you
want to give us an update of who all is going to be at that
conference? Phil Totaro: We have currently more than 100 attendees
representing more than 50 different companies, and we've got more
than 40 speakers, um, who are, or panelists who are going to be
talking about a diverse array of topics, including, uh, things like
lightning, Uh, damage and detection and prevention, uh, damage
prevention, um, uh, insurance, uh, implications of, uh, operations
maintenance in Australia, um, uh, leading edge erosion. Remote
inspection technologies, uh, condition monitoring systems, uh, as
well as some advice and, and some interesting dialogue that's kind
of emerging around, um, the operators and how do you really, uh,
get a grip on your O& M budget and in particular, how do you
handle the fact that you've got, uh, uh, Windturbine OEM that you
may have signed a long term agreement with that may or may not be
living up to their obligations. So we're going to have a fantastic
event. Um, a lot of people, there's going to be at least like nine
or 10 different operators, owners or operators there. Um, and
plenty of other people to talk to. So, uh, tickets are limited, uh,
by the way, and we are running out. So register today. Uh, if you
want us, um, meet up in, uh, in Australia in a few more days. Allen
Hall: PES Wind, Europe's leading wind energy publication, has
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up. Unlock your wind farm's best performance at Wind Energy O&
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windaustralia. com. Allen Hall: Well, before the Biden
administration left office, they approved decommissioned wind
turbine power. Blades as fill material in coal mine reclamation.
Uh, that approval came after nearly a four year review within the
state's proposal. So the state of Wyoming had a proposal to do
this, but it needed to get, uh, reviewed by the federal government.
That. The Wyoming proposal had already passed in the Wyoming
legislature in about 2020. So it's been sitting in quite a while
for the feds to make a decision. So they made a decision before
they left office. This solution, uh, addresses both mine
reclamation needs and obviously the challenge with what to do with
all the wind turbine blades. So it kind of goes like this, uh, you
can fill the hole essentially where the Coal mine was, I think
there's a maximum limit as to the height that you can fill there,
but it has to be all above groundwater, right? So you can't put
wind turbine blades in someplace where it'd be in the groundwater.
And you have to note it, mark it. There's a bunch of paperwork
things that happen there, but there's a lot of blades can fill a
mine, Joel, because those mines in Wyoming are huge. Joel Saxum: I
think this is a good use of, uh, of Uh, of that facility simply
because there's a lot of rules in place EPA environmental
protection wise for these reclaimed coal mines because they don't
want anything that's in that mine or as a part of that mining
operation to leach out, leak out, move out, either way. So putting
wind turbine blades in as a part of this process, like what we know
about turbine blades is they're, you know, mainly inert. There's
not a whole lot of things that can leach into the ground anyways.
But there, if there was, they're being basically put into a base in
a bowl. That's there where nothing can get out of it anyways. So I
think it's a good use. We have a lot of wind turbine blades. We
know we're working on all kinds of cool projects within the
industry to recycle these blades, but capacity is limited, right?
We know that we can't run 200, 000 tons of blades, you know, in a
year through all the capacity that we have out there to chip them
up and use them. So. If we got to put them somewhere, why not put
them in, into these, uh, reclaimed coal mines? I think it's a great
use. Um, I mean, Phil, have you ever been around a coal mine? Have
you ever seen these things? So Phil Totaro: yeah, I, I haven't
been, um, uh, directly involved in, in coal mining, uh, or
extraction, but, um, I, back in 2018, I first had a conversation
with somebody about this kind of a proposal to, uh, store disused
blades in coal mines. And I think a lot of people have the
incorrect impression that we're just going to like toss these
things into some kind of, you know, tunnel or something, um, and,
and bury over them, uh, and just forget about them and, and leave
them there indefinitely. And the reality is when what we're talking
about with coal mines is we have more open cast mines than, than
anything else. And so we can use these open cast mines just as
temporary storage for the blades, um, until we do develop that Um,
physical capacity to do the blade shredding, uh, where we repurpose
it for, for things like concrete or other materials. Um, and we're
starting to get some chemical processes developed now where you can
actually chemically decompose some of the polymers in, um, these,
you know, legacy fiberglass blades where they weren't developed
with, uh, uh, recyclable resin, uh, material. And we're, we're
gonna have, you know, within the next five years or so, we're going
to have the ability to chemically decompose a lot more blades than
what we have the ability to do today. So, um, using mines as
temporary storage for disused blades, not a bad idea. I, I like
this one. Allen Hall: Yeah. Seamus Gamesa just had an announcement
about that, Phil, where they are using some sort of process to pull
fiber out of old blades and reuse it. I don't know if you saw that,
but it was probably a week or so ago that I saw the first news of
it, and I think you're right, I don't think it had anything to do
with recyclable resin. I think they were using existing resin
systems and breaking them down. Which is interesting, right? And I
think that's a cool technology. So a lot of things happening right
now. Joel Saxum: I think at the end of the day, the most important
thing here is that we know we want to dispose of blades in a proper
way, but we have to do it economically. And all of these new
processes are great, but do they make sense economically and
financially? This one of putting blades in the, in the coal mines
does. I don't know if. Heating liquids and chemical processes and
stuff for each blade does make sense right now. Allen Hall: Yeah,
the Siemens Gomezza process is a pyrolysis process. So you're
heating the blade up to remove the resin. Joel Saxum: Energy
intensive, slow. Phil Totaro: And that's the thing, Joel, is at
least we've got the ability to have some place for storage of the
blades until that chemical process can be made cheap enough where
we can, we can do it. So I don't, You know, I don't see that being
a problem either way. You know, once, once we've got enough cost,
um, enough, uh, economies of scale with the chemical decomposition
process, um, then, you know, we, we know where the blades are, we,
we stuck them over there in this open cast mine. So, you know,
it's, I think it's, uh, an easy enough conversation to have. Joel
Saxum: As busy wind energy professionals, staying informed is
crucial. And let's face it, difficult. That's why the Uptime
Podcast recommends P. E. S. Wind magazine. P. E. S.