Fluorinated Recycled Wind Turbine Blade Powders for High-Performance Superhydrophobic Fluorocarbon Coating

Abstract

To enable high-value utilization of thermosetting composite waste from decommissioned wind turbine blades, this study proposes a strategy based on mechanically recycled wind turbine blade powder. The waste blades were mechanically ground to obtain wind turbine blade powder with a particle size ≤50 μm. Subsequent alkaline treatment yielded hydroxyl-enriched powder, characterized by abundant surface hydroxyl functionalities. The hydroxyl-enriched powder was further modified via surface grafting with perfluorodecyltriethoxysilane, resulting in a superhydrophobic fluorinated filler with a water contact angle of 152.2°. Furthermore, the multifunctional composite coatings were successfully fabricated by incorporating the fluorinated filler into a fluorocarbon resin matrix via ultrasonic-assisted dispersion, followed by spray coating. With the addition of 60% fluorinated filler, the resulting coating exhibited superhydrophobic properties, characterized by a water contact angle exceeding 150° and a sliding angle below 10°, along with excellent anti-soiling performance. In addition, the composite coating demonstrated superior dynamic anti-icing performance, delaying surface icing by a factor of three and achieving a low ice adhesion strength of approximately 200 kPa. The coating also showed strong corrosion resistance, retaining an impedance above 107 Ω·cm2 after 15 days of immersion in 3.5 wt% NaCl solution, outperforming the reference pure tinplate substrates. This work demonstrates that the incorporation of the fluorinated filler into fluorocarbon coatings offers a facile, energy-efficient, and scalable strategy, paving the way for a promising engineering solution to the high-value recovery and functional reuse of waste wind turbine blade materials.