Australian University embarks on a quest to recycle end-of-life photovoltaic panels

University of New South Wales (UNSW) researchers in Australia have developed a new technique for recycling end-of-life photovoltaic (PV) panels, which can separate 99% of PV cell particles.

Recycling PV panels is quite a task because innumerable components, such as glass, silicon, aluminium, wiring, and plastic, are integrated into a solar module, which makes them difficult to separate. According to the International Renewable Energy Agency, this will be a significant issue, with approximately eight million tonnes of PV waste being produced globally by 2030, and this number is expected to reach 78 million tonnes by 2050.

The ProMO lab at the University of New South Wales (UNSW), Sydney, has developed a patented sieving process that can quickly and efficiently sort the component materials specifically for PV panels. The first step in recycling PV panels mainly involves removing notable components such as the aluminium frame and glass sheets to leave only the solar cell.

However, Yansong Shen, who leads the ProMo team, has stated that crushing the panel and separating the material inside the solar cell is currently one of the critical activities performed by the lab.

Yansong Shen exclaimed: ‘If we do not have a simple method for high-abrasion separation, then we can’t effectively move on to the third step, which is recovering the various material that has been separated and being able to reuse it. The key to our new process is the addition of the sieving aids, which help to crush the solar cells into smaller particles allowing better separation of all the components. That makes it much easier to recover important elements such as the silver contained in the solar cells.’

 ‘Our group of 30 researchers is the largest in Australia working on PV recycling technology development, not lifecycle assessment only, and probably one of the largest in the world. This patent is just one part of one recycling process for end-of-life solar panels, and we are also working on other solutions to the other steps,’ claimed Shen.

‘We are working with some industry partners, but we would like to engage in more industry collaborations to scale this process up and enhance the economic feasibility of the PV recycling process,” Shen asserted.

The whole crushing and sieving process is conducted within a vibrating enclosure and can take almost 15 minutes to successfully separate the PV components. By running tests, researchers could extract 99% of silver from a cell for potential reuse using their process.