European consortium targets end-of-life PV panel silicon recycling

In January, a European consortium with 11 partners from industry, academia, non-profit and research institutes, launched a three-year project with a budget of €9 million ($9.84 million) to demonstrate the viability of tapping into PV panel recycling for silicon supply.

Dubbed Fostering A Recycled European Silicon Supply (FORESi), the project considers all the technical, economic and environmental aspects of recycling and re-using end-of-life modules.

It has several enabling technology goals. Building on an assessment of state-of-the-art European practices for the recycling of end-of-life PV panels, the team will develop a system that tests panels for reuse or repair. A process will be developed to dismantle to extract the raw material silicon from the non-reusable panels. In addition, new technologies will be utilized to purify the silicon to a level of purity sufficient to produce new PV panels and batteries, according to the project team.

The consortium members include Beglium-based Recma, Latvia-based Latvijas Tehnologiskais Centrs Nodibinajums, Hungary-based Bay Zoltan Alkalmazott Kutatasi Kozhasznu Nonprofit Kft, Italy-based Applied Materials Italia, Slovakia-based Slovenska Technicka Univerzita V Bratislave, along with several France-based entities, including Boralex, Mondragon Assembly France, Carbon, Hespul Association, and Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives (CEA).

The project coordinator is Sipow, a Norwegian startup company that aims to produce monocrystalline pure silicon combining innovative low-cost methods with silicon recovered from end-of-life solar panel waste scrap.

The project is one of the latest groups to pursue innovative end-of-life solutions for PV panels. Others include France-based Rosi Solar and Italy’s Tialpi, as well as Japan’s Rexia Corporation, a joint venture between conglomerates Marubeni Corporation and Hamada. Others include research groups at the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and Australia's University of New South Wales.