A 49 foot section of a worn turbine blade trucked in from a Colorado wind farm was laid across a creek in an Atlanta park, with a bridge built on it, allowing access to 2 acres previously blocked off by the river
The park is Beaverbrook Park, and the girder is a section of a retired turbine blade hauled in from a wind farm in Colorado. The piece runs about 49 feet and weighs close to 7,000 pounds. It was cut, laid on its side, bolted into concrete abutments and decked over.
A wind turbine blade is not scrap that happens to be strong. It is a cantilever beam, engineered to hold its own weight in the air and take bending load in every weather for two or three decades without cracking.
The Atlanta crossing is the third of these, and the first outside Europe. The original went in on a greenway in County Cork in January 2022, a span of about 16 feet built from two blades that once turned on small turbines, and the team counted a 20 percent reduction in carbon against the steel girders it replaced.
There is going to be a lot of turbine blades that have outlived their service life, so if not scrapping them, secondary use may be the way to go. Aside from footpaths - for which the use probably is limited - using them as noise barriers along highways might be an option. Would look good too....
ReplyDeleteTHAT would be OUTSTNANDING! GREAT idea!
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