Engineers are building bridges with recycled wind turbine blades
Source: The Verge
On a former train track bed connecting the towns of Midleton and Youghal in County Cork, Ireland, workers recently excavated the rusted remains of an old railway bridge and installed a pedestrian one in its place. The bridge would have been an unremarkable milestone in the development of a new pedestrian greenway through the Irish countryside, if not for what it’s made of: recycled wind turbine blades.
That makes it just the second “blade bridge” in the world. The first, installed last October in a small town in western Poland, officially opened in early January. The engineers and entrepreneurs behind these bridges are hopeful they represent the beginning of a new trend: repurposing old wind turbine blades for infrastructure projects.
It keeps them out of landfills and saves energy required to make new construction materials. When civil engineer Kieran Ruane first saw concept designs for a bridge built with wind turbine blades, he said the idea was “immediately appealing.”
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LINK:
https://www.theverge.com/2022/2/11/22929059/recycled-wind-turbine-blade-bridges-world-first