The GE Brief: February 9, 2021
NEW LIFE
LM Wind Power is one of the world’s largest makers of blades for wind turbines. These blades are designed to last for more than 20 years, but what happens to them when they are done spinning? In the past, they ended up in landfills, lined up like dinosaur bones. LM Wind Power wants to change that. The company, which became carbon neutral in 2018, is working with the wind industry to come up with blades that could be 100% recyclable in the future.
Group effort: Last fall, LM Wind Power’s parent company, GE Renewable Energy, partnered with Veolia North America to co-process decommissioned blades in the manufacturing of Portland cement, the most common ingredient in concrete. And in January, a group of Danish companies that includes LM Wind Power won funding from the country’s authorities for a three-year project, DecomBlades. GE Renewable Energy will also collaborate with Carbon Rivers, a startup at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, and other partners to develop a system for recycling glass fiber from blade parts. And LM Wind Power also plans to work with its suppliers. “Preventing waste before it occurs is the best way to reduce our impact on the planet, and it’s simply good business,” says Hanif Mashal, vice president of engineering and technology at LM Wind Power. The company’s waste reduction in blade manufacturing has yielded more than $33 million in savings since 2016.
Click here to learn more about efforts to make wind power more sustainable.
TEA WITH EINSTEIN
Some people have a lucky star; GE researcher, engineer and educator Pier Abetti has a whole constellation. Abetti, who turned 100 on Feb. 7, spoke with GE Reports about his extraordinary life and career. Growing up on the outskirts of Florence, Italy, Abetti lived with his family close to the observatory where his father, Giorgio, and grandfather, Antonio, made important observations of stars, galaxies and the sun. The observatory just happened to be situated close to the villa where another famous Italian astronomer, Galileo Galilei, spent his final years. So you could say that science was not only in Abetti’s blood; it was his destiny.
Smart guy: As a kid, Abetti’s parents frequently hosted scientific stars, including eventual Nobel Prize winners Enrico Fermi and GE’s Irving Langmuir, for afternoon tea. When Pier was 8 years old in 1929, family guest Albert Einstein tousled the child's hair and told his parents that the boy was very smart. “One day he will be as famous as his father and his grandfather,” Abetti remembers Einstein saying. After World War II, Abetti immigrated to the U.S., where he earned a doctorate in electrical engineering and went to work for GE. For 34 years, Abetti played an important role in improving the electrical grid, developing computers and doing pioneering work on power transformer technology. He earned the Charles A. Coffin Award for outstanding merit, then the highest honor for a GE employee and named after the company’s first CEO.
Click here for more on Abetti’s rich life and his trailblazing work at GE.
COOLEST THINGS ON EARTH ?
1. Hydrogen Goo
A chemical form of hydrogen that’s solid at room temperature — it looks like gray goo — could become a source of hydrogen fuel for electric vehicles.
2. Brain Chips
Researchers at Aston University in Birmingham, U.K., are seeking to grow human brain stem cells on a microchip to “push the boundaries of artificial intelligence.”
3. Green Plastic
A team of German scientists has modified the metabolic properties of cyanobacteria (aka blue-green algae) to produce “natural plastic” at a potentially industrial scale.
Learn more here about this week’s Coolest Things on Earth.
— QUOTE OF THE DAY —
“We now want the whole value chain to be sustainable, well beyond the area of our operational control.”
— Hanif Mashal, vice president of engineering and technology at LM Wind Power
Quote: GE Reports. Images: GE Renewable Energy, Pier Abetti.