Environmentally and Financially Sound Recycling of Silicon Solar Panels

Many current technologies for silicon solar panel recycling are rudimentary. They recover only the aluminum frame and copper cables. The most advanced technology so far is by NPC Incorporated, which takes a step further to cleanly separate silicon solar cells from glass and fluoropolymer back sheet. However, there is no effective method to process the separated silicon cells for metal recovery including silver and lead. This talk discusses some of the technical barriers and recent progress in the development of an environmentally and financially sound technology for silicon panel recycling. Several areas to improve the recyclability of silicon panels are also outlined.