Life Cycle Assessment of Ultra-Tall Wind Turbine Towers Comparing Concrete Additive Manufacturing to Conventional Manufacturing (2023-06)¶

Wind power is a quickly growing renewable energy resource within the continental United States and is expected to continue increasing as more wind farms are installed onshore and offshore. As a part of this growth, larger turbines benefit from economies of scale from taller towers. However, the development of ultra-tall wind turbine towers is hindered by transportation restrictions which limit the diameter and weight of the prefabricated tower sections. One proposed solution to this problem is to employ concrete additive manufacturing technology to build ultra-tall wind turbine towers on-site. To evaluate the potential environmental impacts of this approach, this study performed a life cycle assessment comparing four prototype 7.5-MW wind turbine towers designed with a height of 140 m: a conventional tubular steel tower assembled using bolted connections, two 3D printed concrete tower additively manufactured on-site with normal-strength (35 MPa) or high-strength (78 MPa) concrete, and a 3D cast concrete tower with normal strength (35 MPa) concrete cast into concrete formworks additively manufactured with high-strength (78 MPa) concrete. The 3D cast concrete tower segments are manufactured off-site and assembled on-site. The life cycle assessment examined the impacts of differences in materials inventory, structural designs, manufacturing methods, maintenance schedules, and end-of-life options for the four towers. The results indicate that the material production stage dominates, contributing over 92% of the total CO2 emissions and 67–93% of the energy consumption of the four towers. Compared with the steel tower, the normal-strength 3D printed concrete tower has 23% lower total life cycle CO2 emissions but 29% higher energy consumption; the high-strength 3D printed concrete tower has 16% higher life cycle CO2 emissions and 64% higher energy consumption. Parametric studies were also conducted to examine the effects of cement content by weight, distance from the concrete plant to the tower construction site, the number of tower sections, rated tower life, and tower end-of-life recycling rate. The results indicate that reducing cement content in 3D printed concrete such as by incorporating waste or recycled materials can significantly reduce the life cycle environmental impacts of ultra-tall turbine towers.