Romans, France – Covestro Baule has developed a new piece of vacuum infusion equipment for large wind turbine blades. The machine was used by Chinese blade-maker Goldwind to make 64.2 meter-long blades for a recent installation.
Philippe Jeantin, Covestro's global head of machinery, said the machine had helped the blade manufacture overcome a number of processing challenges. It had to be able to cast large and variable amounts of polyurethane under vacuum to correctly infuse the blade reinforcement.
"This machine is, therefore, combining a very accurate dosing, a large variable output controlled by in-mold pressure and a real time data management to ensure a high-quality direct infusion process for these large rotor blades," Jeantin said.
"Today, as the wind energy market is growing, we are faced with the challenge of producing ever-larger wind blades," said Lliu Baofeng, senior engineer at Goldwind. He added that his company was in the market for dispensing equipment which is suitable for processing PU resin specially developed for larger wind blades. "The machine that Covestro engineered… will allow us to propel the whole industry to make sustainable and innovating progress towards large blades," he said.
Simon Chen, head of Covestro Elastomers in the Asia Pacific region said: "Our local machine team in China will support our partners to achieve rapid growth and technical upgrading of the wind power industry. Larger blades have become more popular."