Decarbonising Wind Turbine Blade Manufacturing with Sustainable Bio-Resin Technology

Our Client & Their Goals

Implementing more environmentally sustainable practices is a significant pressure point for many businesses, and our Client’s business, manufacturing wind turbine blades, was no exception. Our Client was interested in decarbonising the manufacturing process for the blades used with their wind turbines, which relied extensively on the use of polymer resins.

These resins were a practical choice, as they are excellent materials to use when manufacturing components that must be both strong and lightweight. However, the polymer resins used to make these blades were usually derived from petrochemical-based feedstocks, or materials that are produced by refining fossil fuels, a process which generates significant amounts of CO₂. In addition, many types of petrochemical-based resins used during the manufacturing process can pose health hazards to workers, and generate hazardous waste materials that must be disposed of safely. Making these materials more sustainable across their complete life cycle, including increasing the recyclability of the product at the end of its life, was a major goal for our Client. 

As a result, our Client wanted CamIn’s help to identify solutions that would allow them to continue using their reliable, resin-based process for manufacturing turbine blades, while substituting innovative, more sustainable resin materials.

CamIn’s Solutions

We developed a plan by working with our Client, understanding their specific challenges, and identifying the environmental and technical requirements that any alternative sustainable resin materials would have to meet. We then selected five leading experts on bio-resins from academia and industry to work with our consulting team. Our team searched the globe to identify groups at universities and research institutes that were working on high-performance bio-based resins, shortlisting any developing materials that could meet our Client’s needs.

After identifying more than 20 of the most promising bio-resins under development, CamIn’s team used their scientific expertise to critically evaluate each potential material. Our analysis investigated the sustainability of each compound, and considered whether it could meet the demanding technical requirements of our Client’s specific application.

This allowed our Client to effectively evaluate the trade-offs between different types of bio-resins and decide on their final strategy for acquiring and further developing specific bio-resin technologies.

The Impact

Our team produced an in-depth report that provided our Client with a straightforward and comprehensive evaluation of each bio-resin’s characteristics. This allowed our Client to effectively evaluate the trade-offs between different types of bio-resins and decide on their final strategy for acquiring and further developing specific bio-resin technologies. We also identified more than 30 researchers working on the bio-resin technologies that we evaluated as most suitable for their specific application. As a result, our Client was prepared to quickly and easily pursue partnerships to achieve their goals.