0617002 - ÚCHP 2025 GR eng A - Abstract
Šyc, Michal - Muñiz Sierra, Héctor - Korotenko, Ekaterina - Gruber, Václav - Šperlich, Antonín
Possibilities for the concentration of silver in the recycling of photovoltaic panels.
Proceedings book. Rhodes, 2024. ISBN N.
[International Conference on Sustainable Solid Waste Management. 19.06.2024-22.06.2024, Rhodes]
R&D Projects: GA TA ČR(CZ) SS02030008
Institutional support: RVO:67985858
Keywords : photovoltaic panels * silver * recycling * Knelson concentrator
OECD category: Chemical process engineering
Result website:
https://rhodes2024.uest.gr/

Photovoltaic (PV) solar panels are one of the most promising technologies for renewable energy production. The installation of PV panels started two decades ago and increased massively in recent years, with a huge boom in 2017 (Chowdhury, 2020). In 2022, the installed capacity of PV was 1,053 GW worldwide. Nowadays, the silicon type of panels dominates the market (Włodarczyk, 2022). The lifetime of PV is estimated at 25 years. It is expected that the total amount of end-of-life PV panels will reach 9.57 million tonnes by 2050 (Xu, 2018). Silicon PV consists of silicon wafers, metal conductors, a glass cover and polymers that act as adhesives. The recycling of PV panels is complicated by their multilayer and multi-component nature. The panel is a thin sheet and the individual layers, five in total, are tightly bonded together. The most valuable components are the silicon solar cells and the metal conductors. A rough mass balance of PV is shown in Figure 2, but it is clear that the bulk of the value is in the metals, especially silver (Peplow).

Permanent Link: https://hdl.handle.net/11104/0364000