EuCIA is applying its expertise on the life cycle assessment (LCA) and circularity of composite materials to tidal turbine blades as part of the EU-funded MAXblade project. We recently joined the MAXblade partners for a meeting with the European Commission’s Project Officer to review the progress made since the project’s launch in January 2023.
MAXblade – Maximising tidal energy generation through Blade Scaling and Advanced Digital Engineering – is aiming to upscale tidal energy and drive down costs. The project aims to deliver the essential blade and rotor innovations needed to increase the blade length of Orbital Marine Power’s tidal technology from 10 m to 13 m. This will result in a combined rotor swept area of over 1000 m2 and make them the longest tidal turbine blades in the world.
EuCIA is involved in Work Package 5 – Industrial Competitiveness & Circular Economy, and more specifically in the tasks 5.3 – State-of-the-art for sustainable tidal turbine blades, and 5.4 – Review and analysis of materials and manufacturing methods for recyclable composite tidal blades. This has provided an opportunity to collaborate with the University of Edinburgh and offer technical support on how to approach a life cycle assessment (LCA) for a composite material and how to describe the different aspects of circularity, including existing and future recycling routes.
We will now provide a European market overview and identify potential partners and a supply chain to enable the further development and growth of this renewable energy in Europe.
The MAXblade project coordinator is tidal turbine developer Orbital Marine Power (UK). The partners are EuCIA, Marasoft (Netherlands), TECNALIA (Spain), University of Edinburgh (UK), European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC, UK), ENGIE Laborelec (Belgium), and TechnipFMC (UK).
MAXBlade has received funding from the EU’s Horizon Europe programme and UKRI.
