PV module recycling

Dutch importers that sell solar panels to clients in the Netherlands will have to pay a recycling charge of €40 ($42.50) per ton from July 1. They currently pay just €6.50 per ton.

Hopefuls from 40 different countries submitted entries to the pv magazine Awards in 2022, with more regions represented than ever before. This reflects the industry’s increasing global relevance and the importance all regions are placing on local innovation and production. Here we present the seven winners, who will be honored once again in a live Award ceremony on Jan. 17th, staged alongside the World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi and as part of the 11th MESIA Solar Awards Ceremony.

Italian startup Tialpi is developing a process to recycle end-of-life solar panels that promises to recover 100% of a PV module’s weight. The new plant design is currently being tested at the company’s facility in the Italian northern province of Biella.

The ‘cradle-to-cradle’ certification is considered a globally recognized holistic product quality standard. The assessment is made for five categories: material health, recyclability of materials, energy management and CO2 emissions, water management and social responsibility

Renewable hardware that lasts longer and uses fewer materials could bolster recycling efforts and help to build an effective circular economy for solar and battery technologies, says the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).

Reclaim PV Recycling and the Circular PV Alliance (CPVA) have have agreed to jointly develop standards and testing procedures to support the reuse and resale of solar panels in Australia. Reclaim PV recently discovered that more than 31% of the solar panels collected in the Australian state of Queensland could be considered for reuse, rather than recycling.

Bangladesh currently does not have a recycling center for PV module recycling. But according to a group of local scientists, the country could evolve into a regional hub for PV waste recycling if proper guidelines are implemented.

French start-up Rosi Solar has developed an industrial solution claimed to be capable of recovering high purity silicon, silver and copper contained in end-of-life PV modules. The company’s technology is based on a pyrolysis process that makes it possible to isolate the different metals from the cells.

A preliminary ruling by the European Court of Justice states panel makers should not be responsible for electrical waste management costs in a seven-year period as the rules in place before the EU’s WEEE directive entered force, in 2012, permitted member states to place the obligation on panel users instead. The resulting change in law, in some states, cannot be applied retroactively, under EU legal rules.

Developed by Japanese PV equipment provider NPC Incorporated, the solar module disassembly line is claimed to enable the reuse of frames, junction boxes, intact broken glass, solar cells and EVA sheets.