Valuable Materials Recovery from End-of-Life Photovoltaic Solar Panels recycling: SIREVIVAL PROJECT
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.22399/ijcesen.4540Keywords:
Recycling , End of life , Photovoltaic panels, Silicon, RecoveryAbstract
The photovoltaic panels contain a variety of valuable metals and materials, which are mined and refined at increasing rates such as, silicon cells, copper metallic contact, glass, EVA (ethylene/vinyl acetate copolymer), the back sheet, the aluminum frame and the junction box.Therefore, it is imperative to create recycling methodologies, infrastructure, and policies to maintain the flow of those materials within the industry.Recycling End-of-life “eol” photovoltaic panels ensure efficient use of resources and appropriate treatment of hazardous substances and its can considerably reduce energy needs for production of materials and thus equivalently reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. In the present work, recycling methodology which includes manual pre-sorting, processing of laminates, separation and extraction of materials was applied. In brief, after manual removal of Al frames and junction boxes, typical mechanical, thermal and chemical steps was employed to delaminate the glass and then remove the metallic parts together with silicon and plastic. Leaching/etching was used to separate Si and metal. Additional treatment was used for purifying the recovered silicon. The exhaustive physico-chemical characterization using SEM, XPS, optical microscopy of the raw Silicon and other materials recovered were completed in this work before and after purification.
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