Recent Improvements in Industrial PV Module Recycling
Louis Frisson, Kristoffel Lieten, TM Bruton, Koen Declercq, Jozef Szlufcik, H. de Moor, M. Gorts, A. Benali▿, O. Aceves
Abstract
The considerable growth of the PV market that started 30 years ago, will lead to a fast growing number end of life modules. If good solutions for recycling are developed, a huge accumulation of this end of life and rejected PV modules can be avoided. The aim of this work was to develop and to evaluate different recycling processes. Finally two methods have given acceptable results namely the pyrolysis in a conveyer belt furnace and the pyrolysis in a fluidised bed reactor. Especially for the fluidised bed reactor process, the development has reached an industrial level with the set-up of a big pilot reactor. The cost effectiveness of the process is demonstrated by the high mechanical yield of the process and the high quality of the reclaimed wafers, as proven by a high cell efficiency after reprocessing. The ecological impact of recycling is very high and the energy pay back time decreases drastically due to the avoided high energy consumption of the reclaimed silicon wafer.