High-yield recycling and recovery of copper, indium, and gallium from waste copper indium gallium selenide thin-film solar panels

Recycling of Discarded Photovoltaic Solar Modules for Metal Recovery: A Review and Outlook for the Future

“…88 Hydrometallurgical recovery from CIGS for In, Ga, and Cu values were carried by leaching (5 M HNO 3 ) and solvent extraction (0.05−0.06 M D2EHPA, pH 1−2, A/O-1−4, 5−10 min). 73 The Eh-pH verifies the dissolution of Cu + , In + /In 3+ , and Ga 3+ under acidic conditions (Figure 3(b)). The combined dissolution requires purification steps to sequentially separate individual elements.…”

“…The recovery of >99% for Cd and Te was attained with the possible reuse of CdS in manufacturing solar panels . Hydrometallurgical recovery from CIGS for In, Ga, and Cu values were carried by leaching (5 M HNO 3 ) and solvent extraction (0.05–0.06 M D2EHPA, pH 1–2, A/O-1–4, 5–10 min) . The Eh-pH verifies the dissolution of Cu + , In + /In 3+ , and Ga 3+ under acidic conditions (Figure (b)).…”

“…Low-temperature treatment (liquid N 2 ) was found successful for the separation of the CIGS absorption layer and Mo back contacts owing to different thermal strains between EVA (270–300 ppm/°C at 25 °C and 59,670–66,300 ppm/°C at 196 °C) and tempered glass (3.25–9.24 ppm/°C at 25 °C and 718.25–2042.04 ppm/°C at 196 °C). The tempered glass can be easily exfoliated due to the decreased viscosity of EVA postliquid N 2 treatment …”

Valuable metal recycling from thin film CIGS solar cells by leaching under mild conditions

“…Some means to up-concentrating, for example by a reuse of the same leachate for multiple cells, should be considered for industrialization. A few examples of elements that could be recovered from the leachate after the achievement of the desired concentration, is In, Ga and Cu by means of solvent extraction [23], Ag by electrowinning [47], Mo and W possibly by precipitation due to their tendency to form oxides with limited solubility (see 3.1) etc.…”

“…However, high purity of the recovered materials seems to be a significant factor for reducing the recycling costs [22]. Finally, Liu et al [23] studied the recycling of real CIGS modules, starting by peeling off the active layer, but measuring only the concentration of the elements of the CIGS layer and not the contamination from elements present in other layers. Then S and Se were removed by annealing, the residue was leached with 5 M HNO 3 at 80 • C and solvent extraction with D2EHPA was used to separate In, Ga and Cu.…”