Sustainable Development Goals

Abstract/Objectives

In recent years, the government has vigorously promoted renewable energy, especially wind power generation. The government plans to build thousands of offshore wind turbines in the western waters of Taiwan. However, for the installation of offshore wind turbines, the foundation piles must undergo anti-corrosion works to slow down the service life of the foundation piles due to long-term seawater erosion. However, the methods used in anti-corrosion projects may be possible It will cause problems such as precipitation of heavy metals and local acidification of seawater. Therefore, it is necessary to evaluate the impact of offshore wind turbine foundation pile anti-corrosion projects on the ecological environment. The main purpose of this research project is to monitor the environment and ecology near the foundation piles of offshore wind turbines to understand whether the environment and biological facies in the sea area near the foundation piles have changed due to the influence of the anti-corrosion project of the foundation piles of the wind turbines.

Results/Contributions

The steel pile of offshore windmill immerse in marine water will corrode continuously, the most common anticorrosion method in the world is using Al and Zn as sacrificial anode (catholic protection). The sacrificial anode will release Al3+ and Zn2+ into marine water, water and bottom substrate were sampled at control site and windmill site in this study, all inspected items were meet the environmental quality standard, Al3+ and Zn2+ without increasing significantly. Under small scale and short term operation of catholic protection, benthic animal community and bacteria flora also not affected by steel pile significantly. The difference of benthic animal community structure between each sample sites mainly caused by artificial hard materials constructed around pile. The bacterial flora also were different between control site and windmill sites, but no of them presented heavy metal polluted flora. The current research result also established the environmental baseline for early developed stage of offshore wind farm. The long term and large scale use of catholic protection for wind mill will or not have predictable effects in the future? This study results could be the comparison bases for future monitoring.

Keywords

ecological censusoffshore windfarm

Contact Information

楊樹森
shusen@mx.nthu.edu.tw