SCARCE Phase 2 (RT 2):Recycling of Laminated Solar Panels

As the photovoltaic industry continues to grow, it is essential to develop efficient waste management for the projected end-of-life (EoL) solar panels. The effort to design proper waste management for these solar wastes are still at an early stage. Most of the established processes today revolve around the removal of the aluminium frames and tempered glass – typically by thermal or mechanical treatment. In terms of sustainability, the noxious gas emission generated from thermal treatment and, the negligence on recovery and repurposing of the high-purity silicon substrates makes these recycling processes less attractive. In SCARCE Phase 1, we have devised solvent delamination as a replacement of thermal treatment to separate the glass from solar waste. Alternative crush-and-sieve operation demonstrated segregation of valuable metals from polymeric components via particle size differences. This allows focused hydrometallurgical effort for recovery of valuable metals and avoid the need for thermal treatment to remove the polymers. Sequential selective leaching and single-reagent approaches have been designed and tested as parts of hydrometallurgy developments. The team has also explored and validated potential upcycling applications with the recovered materials from solar wastes, namely metal-organic frameworks (MOF) and lithium-ion batteries. This has resulted in 4 technology disclosures (including 1 in preparation), published articles and an industrial research collaborative agreement. Moving forward, SCARCE Phase 2 will build on this success and continue developing sustainable technologies. The key focus will be to build on the collected data and further scale up each individual technology to pilot scale. Low-temperature delamination operation and greener hydrometallurgy strategies will be employed to minimize carbon emission and mitigate hazardous operation. Mechano-chemical principles will be incorporated into the process to exploit the benefits of enhanced performance and improved efficiencies. Overall, SCARCE strives to work towards the sustainable future by developing green strategies for solar waste recycling that can be easily scalable, deployable and adaptable as a standalone operation or complementary to existing plants.