A solar panel has a lifespan of about 20 years. This means that many panels that were installed at the beginning of this century need to be replaced. But what to do with them? Until now, most of them have simply been thrown away in landfills and landfills because no commercially viable recycling process existed to recover the precious elements within them. But just like companies like redwood materials discovering that they can recycle and monetize EV batteries, some companies are seeing the financial opportunities that old solar panels offer and are looking for ways to do the same.
In a recent report, Rystad Energyan independent energy research and business intelligence firm with offices in Oslo, London, New York, Houston, Aberdeen, Stavanger, Moscow, Rio de Janeiro, Singapore, Bangalore, Tokyo, Sydney and Dubai, says: “The demand for recycled photovoltaic ( PV) panel components will skyrocket in the coming years as the number of installations increases and the threat of a supply bottleneck looms.”
It says the recyclable materials of end-of-life PV panels will be worth more than $2.7 billion by 2030, up from just $170 million this year. The trend is set to accelerate in the coming decades with a value of recyclables projected to approach $80 billion by 2050. With that kind of money on offer, Adam Smith’s invisible hand is likely to step in and work its magic.
“Our forecasts show that recovered materials from retired panels could account for 6% of solar PV investment by 2040, compared to just 0.08% today,” says Rystad. “The material supply side is expected to encounter bottlenecks with growing mineral demand, and recycling can be a supply relief as panels reach the end of their life.”
“Rising energy costs, improved recycling technology and government regulations could pave the way for a market where more broken solar panels are sent to recycling instead of the nearest landfill. Recycling PV panels can help operators cut costs, overcome supply chain problems and increase the likelihood of countries meeting their solar capacity targets,” said Rystad Energy analyst Kristin Stuge.
Getting to the good things
There are many raw materials that go into a solar panel, but it is difficult to get them out again. Arizona State University researchers have received a $485,000 grant from the DOE Advanced Manufacturing Office pursuing a new recycling process to recover high-value materials such as silver and silicon. If all goes well, a cleaner and more cost-effective solar energy recycling process could hit the market the moment the first wave of solar panels enters the waste stream, the report said. The edge.
“As we ramp up clean energy production and produce more clean energy technology, thinking about end-of-life recycling becomes even more important,” said Diana Bauer, acting deputy director of the Advanced Manufacturing Office at DOE.
Meng Tao, a solar sustainability researcher at ASU who is leading the new recycling efforts, estimates the world could face a shortage of silver long before we build all the solar panels needed to get rid of fossil fuels. to step. Solar-grade silicon takes a tremendous amount of energy to make, and using it more than once is important in minimizing the solar industry’s electricity needs — and its carbon footprint.
When solar panels are recycled today, these materials are rarely recovered. Instead, recyclers usually remove the aluminum frame that holds the panel together, strip the copper wiring from the back, and shred the panel itself, creating a solar hash that’s sold as broken glass. Those three products — aluminum, copper, and broken glass — can run a recycler $3 per panel, Tao says. Companies Tao has spoken with say it costs up to $25 to recycle a panel, after dismantling and transportation costs.
Tao and his colleagues propose a process in which the envelope-sized silicon cells in solar panels are first separated from the sheets of polymers and glass that surround them using a hot steel blade. A patent-pending chemical concoction developed by Tao’s recycling startup TG Companies is then used to extract silver, tin, copper and lead from the cells, leaving silicon behind.
While the recycling process uses harsh chemicals, Tao says those chemicals can be “regenerated and used over and over,” reducing the amount of waste created — a feature he says makes his recycling method unique. He adds that by recovering lead, the process also has the potential to eliminate an environmental hazard that would otherwise end up as recycling waste or in landfills. He envisions the potential to recover about $15 worth of silver from each panel, but there is still no way to recover the silicon without using an expensive and energy-intensive process.
Rystad Energy says that after the aluminum frame and junction box are separated from a used solar panel, it is crushed into pieces and sorted by material. “There are PV dismantling machines on the market today, including one from Japan-based NPC, which separates the panel parts even further before crushing the remains, improving the recovery rate for materials. With the evolving technology, the market is gradually being perceived with more enthusiasm and new companies are emerging, such as the US-based startup SolarCycle, which has generated significant seed funding from investors,” it says.
There will also be political considerations. “Technology, policy and economic viability are both barriers and solutions to the evolving circularity of minerals in the PV panel industry,” says Rystad. “Regulatory mechanisms can be an efficient tool to bring about rapid change, as we have already seen in the European market and through some first attempts in the US at the state level. Ultimately, bottlenecks and long lead times in raw material extraction could make solar PV recycling an economically viable industry in the coming decades.”
How much will recycled materials be worth?
Rystad expects the world to process 27 million tons of discarded solar panels annually by 2040. “By assuming a 15-year PV panel life and analyzing installation activity in 2022, we can estimate which regions and countries will benefit most from recycling PV materials in 2037. China will reach 40 this year. % of global installations, and when these panels mature in 15 years, the estimated recycling value will be $3.8 billion, out of a global total of $9.6 billion.
“India comes in second with an estimated value of $800 million, followed by Japan with an estimated value of $200 million. The value of recyclables in North America by 2037 is expected to be worth $1.5 billion, while Europe will own $1.4 billion.”
The takeaway
We can’t complain about how environmentally friendly renewables are if they turn out to be major sources of pollution in the future. The key is to create circular economic systems that reuse the materials in all EV batteries and solar panels that will be produced in the next 20 years or more. Efforts are already underway to blades of wind turbines. Recycling technology may not be as sexy as building electric cars, but it is no less important if we want to prevent the earth from becoming uninhabitable for humans.
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