Articles | Volume 10, issue 6
https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-10-1123-2025
https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-10-1123-2025
Research article
 | 
13 Jun 2025
Research article |  | 13 Jun 2025

Estimating microplastic emissions from offshore wind turbine blades in the Dutch North Sea

Marco Caboni, Anna Elisa Schwarz, Henk Slot, and Harald van der Mijle Meijer

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Developing an atlas of rain-induced leading edge erosion for wind turbine blades in the Dutch North Sea
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Cited articles

4C-Offshore: Global Offshore Wind Farms Database, https://www.4coffshore.com/windfarms/, last access: 28 November 2024. a
Bak, C., Forsting, A. M., and Sorensen, N. N.: The influence of leading edge roughness, rotor control and wind climate on the loss in energy production, J. Phys. Conf. Ser., 1618, 052050, https://doi.org/10.1088/1742-6596/1618/5/052050, 2020. a
Barfknecht, N. and von Terzi, D.: Aerodynamic interaction of rain and wind turbine blades: the significance of droplet slowdown and deformation for leading-edge erosion, Wind Energ. Sci., 9, 2333–2357, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-9-2333-2024, 2024. a
Bech, J. I., Hasager, C. B., and Bak, C.: Extending the life of wind turbine blade leading edges by reducing the tip speed during extreme precipitation events, Wind Energ. Sci., 3, 729–748, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-3-729-2018, 2018. a, b
Bech, J. I., Johansen, N. F.-J., Madsen, M. B., Hannesdóttir, Á., and Hasager, C. B.: Experimental study on the effect of drop size in rain erosion test and on lifetime prediction of wind turbine blades, Renew. Energ., 197, 776–789, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.renene.2022.06.127, 2022. a, b
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In this study, we assessed the total quantity of microplastics emitted by wind turbines currently operating in the Dutch North Sea. The estimates of microplastics currently emitted from offshore wind turbines in the Netherlands account for a very small portion of the total microplastics released offshore in the Netherlands, specifically less than 1 ‰.
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