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The latest IEA report provides a comprehensive review of all existing technologies in this market segment, from purely mechanical recycling to innovative techniques such as pulsed light treatment, water jet cleaning, pyrolysis and chemical treatments.
A new report from the International Energy Agencys Photovoltaic Power Systems Programme (IEA-PVPS) describes the growth in end-of-life solar PV recycling activity. The document provides an overview of equipment manufacturers and recycling companies, as well as trend information on patents and research publications. It also provides information on early life cycle inventories (LCIs) provided by several US and European trade players.
The report includes details on 177 commercial PV material recyclers and equipment suppliers, up from 25 companies identified in a 2017 study. “It’s exciting to see the progress over a period of about 6 years in the number of recycling companies with dedicated PV solutions since the last report,” corresponding author Cara Libby, technical executive at the US-based Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), told pv magazine .
Several recycling companies provided life cycle inventory (LCI) data on recycling processes, energy consumption and material recovery. Three of them were from Germany: Reiling Glas Recycling, LuxChemtech and Flaxres; two were from France (ROSI and Envie 2E Aquitaine), as well as the Italian Tialpi, the Japanese NPC and the American First Solar.
Regarding recycling data for crystalline silicon (c-Si) and thin-film cadmium telluride (CdTe) activity, “most processes are still in the development or pilot phase, except for several mechanical process technologies for c-Si modules and First Solar’s ??recycling plants in the United States, Vietnam, Malaysia and Germany for CdTe modules.” Reported recycling volumes ranged from 1,000 t/y to 50,000 t/y.
Mechanical recycling, grinding and shredding are the original methods, and probably the most established and understood, but the results are still not very pure. “We see investment in specific equipment and new technologies, and scaling up as well,” says Libby, who highlights water jet cleaning to remove back films, pulsed light treatment to melt the films so they can be peeled off, pyrolysis techniques, hot knife and chemical methods.
When asked by pv magazine whether the PV industry itself could end up being the largest market for recovered materials, Libby replied: “It is indeed a very large market, but it can be difficult to reuse materials such as silicon in new products because of purity issues. The same can be true for glass. You need very high purity materials to reuse them in the PV industry.”
Patent activity and technology publication
The team identified relevant patents and publications on photovoltaic recycling technology and observed a “steep” increase in activity. A global patent search identified 456 patents, of which 80% related to recycling processes for modules based on silicon, cell metals, polymers, glass or devices.
The companies with the most patents were identified and ranked by the Korea Energy Research Institute, followed by Chinas Suzhou Goldway Technologies, First Solar and Yingli, a Chinese module manufacturer. The next three companies in the ranking were from Japan, Tattori Resource Recycling, NPC, which supplies photovoltaic energy production and recycling equipment, and Daikin Industries.
The country ranking based on patent activity puts China at the top with 141, followed by Japan with 85, South Korea with 79, the US with 54, and 33 for Germany.
The global literature search revealed 569 relevant papers and publications. The report notes that the number of publications has “increased considerably since 2010,” which correlates with the “number of new installed PV capacities,” along with “discussions and implementation” of waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) regulations in Europe. “Many countries are considering waste PV policies and there is a lot of interest in the research,” the report says. |
