By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent
Easily lost amidst the excitement and thrill of building more solar capacity is a real concern: What do we do with the solar modules after the typical 25-year lifespan of a particular project?
Fortunately, thanks the the European Union, a German manufacturer is on the case and has built the first industrial-sized recycling pilot plant for an industrial company in its home country.
According to the website Phys.org:
With strong competencies in plant manufacturing and wastewater treatment including recycling, the Geltz Umwelt-Technologie firm has built a test and treatment facility at a large disposal firm to retrieve reusable materials from solar modules.
Until now, recycling solar modules has been limited to the glass and the aluminum – ignoring all the valuable minerals that make up the heart of the module themselves. Fabian Gelz, a spokesman for GUT, said:
Up until now, there has not been any technical solution to recycle and separate the valuable materials from the mixed scrap. The critical step in the recycling process is therefore the destruction of the polymer layer.
Here’s where German engineering came in. According to the article, “ELSi came up with a novel solution to address this key issue. Using an energy-efficient pyrolysis process, project partners managed to dissolve the undesired polymer layers and easily detach the glass in the panels. This novel advanced process enabled them to successfully separate and recover aluminium, glass, silver, copper, tin and silicon in their pure form.”
“During the process of isolating and classifying materials, the fine materials were separated by sieves and air classifiers. To treat the exhaust gases of the mechanical process, project partners used a thermal afterburner and a quench system with a gas scrubber,” the article continued.
The article says that at its current capacity, the plant could recycle 50,000 solar modules a year and recapture 95% of the materials to be used as raw materials again.
Think about that for a minute: Not only is solar the clean energy of the future but, with this recycling technology (if it works) in place, it could also be the cleanest manufactured form of energy as well. That would make solar an absolute no-brainer – so let’s hope the plant works as advertised.
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