As part of this project, the research group at HTWK Leipzig is working on the development of an energy-efficient recycling process for end-of-life wind turbine blades.
On 17 September 2026, the kick-off meeting for the Blade2Poly research project took place. The aim of the project is to develop an energy-efficient recycling process for end-of-life wind turbine rotor blades, in order to recover the glass-fibre-reinforced plastics they contain as high-quality raw materials and make them suitable for new applications in injection moulding.
The R&D project is being carried out as a collaborative project between HTWK Leipzig, KomRec-ReCond GmbH and Schmaus Kunststoffaufbereitung. Together, the project partners are developing an end-to-end process chain, ranging from material characterisation and categorisation through mechanical processing to the further processing of the recovered materials.
A key focus is on the targeted analysis of different rotor blade materials, as well as the intelligent control of the material flow and the recycling process. The recovered glass fibres are then to be processed and combined with recycled plastics to create new post-consumer recycled materials for injection moulding applications.
The project will run from June 2026 to January 2029 and is funded under the Central Innovation Programme for SMEs (ZIM). Blade2Poly aims to contribute to the development of high-quality material recovery pathways for end-of-life rotor blade materials, thereby further advancing the circular economy for fibre-reinforced composites.
