As the first generation of solar cells come to the end of their life and head to landfill, researchers have developed a fully recyclable version.
A team at Sweden’s Linköping University have developed a method to recycle all parts of a solar cell, repeatedly, without environmentally hazardous solvents.
Postdoc Xun Xiao said the recycled solar cell, which had the same efficiency as the original one, was made of perovskite with water as the main solvent.
Mr Xiao said electricity use was expected to increase drastically in the coming years and in order for the transition not to drive climate change, different sustainable energy sources needed to work together.
“Solar energy has long been considered to have great potential and solar panels based on silicon have been on the market for over 30 years.
“But first-generation silicon solar panels are at the end of their life cycle, which has created an unexpected problem.
“There is currently no efficient technology to deal with the waste of silicon panels. That’s why old solar panels end up in the landfill.”
Study co-author Professor Feng Gao said recycling needed to be taken into consideration when developing emerging solar cell technologies.
“If we don’t know how to recycle them, maybe we shouldn’t put them on the market at all,” Professor Gao said.
He said perovskite was one of the most promising technologies for next-generation solar cells.
“They are not only relatively inexpensive and easy to manufacture but also lightweight, flexible and transparent. Thanks to these properties, perovskite solar cells can be placed on many different surfaces, even on windows.”
Professor Gao said given perovskite solar cells currently had a shorter life span than silicon solar cells, so it was important that perovskite solar cell recycling was efficient and environmentally friendly.
He said there were already methods for dismantling perovskite solar cells, which mostly involved using a substance called dimethylformamide, a common ingredient in paint solvents.
“It is toxic, environmentally hazardous and potentially carcinogenic.”
Professor Gao said the researchers had developed a technology where water could be used as a solvent in dismantling the degraded perovskites.
“And more importantly, high-quality perovskites can be recycled from the water solution.”
Read the full study: Aqueous-based recycling of perovskite photovoltaics.
