JEC Composites Innovation Awards 2021: Covestro

Dirk Soontjens, Director of Covestro, comes back on winning a JEC Composites Innovation Award for the creation of a polyurethane-based composites for more productive offshore wind turbine blades with new development opportunities for radar interference mitigation and high performance, environmental coatings.

This innovation results from a collaboration between Covestro and Trelleborg Applied Technologies. The PU resin offers high productivity and the possibility to design longer and lighter blades. By real-scale prototyping, Covestro and its partners demonstrated short production cycles with fast infusion and fast curing, resulting in significant savings in blade manufacturing.

Computer modeling predicts a 100 m PU blade to be lighter and more resilient than those made of epoxy. For its processability and final properties, Covestro PU resin enables the design of new blades for high annual energy production (AEP) and low levelised cost of energy (LCoE). Winning the Innovation Award, he says, will help the company reach a broder audience around the world, meet new partners to create synergies and open to new opportunities.