REM-Colloquium: What are little things?

This question was raised by the audience of the lecture of Prof. Jörg Woidasky, who reported from the "recycling of aircraft and other little things." The answer: There are wind turbines! Because there are parallels , not only in terms of the size of the objects. The rotors of wind turbines also increasingly consist of composite materials - glass fibers or carbon fibers - similar to modern aircraft. In Europe a scrapping of 100 aircraft per year is expected , more than 30,000 tons of wind power rotors per year have to be recycled  in 10 years. This justifies its own disposal concepts and corresponding capacities.
For recycling aircraft such as wind turbines provide a challenge, as the structures with their complex materials must be disassembled properly. There are even ideas with explosives or detonating cords to move the objects to the body and to reduce them into manageable parts. Energetic Disassembly this is called by experts.

In aircraft recycling the real value lies in the parts business, ie if all the parts can be reprocessed and used. The materials with high quality coatings are interesting. In contrast, parts of the interior are practically not recyclable, reported Professor Woidasky.
This November, an international Aircraft Recycling Symposium will be held in Stuttgart, which is organized by the University of Pforzheim, together with the Fraunhofer Institute ICT.