Recovery of Copper from Spent Photovoltaic Ribbon in Solar Module

Abstract

주제어 : 구리, 구리리본전극, 열처리, ICP-MS AbstractThe recovery of copper from spent photovoltaic ribbon was conducted using thermal treatment method at the range of temperature of 300 o C to 600 o C under inert atmosphere. The coating layer consisted of lead of 68.99 wt.% and tin of 31.21 wt.% was melted down at elevated temperatures and was collected on the bottom of crucible. The chemical composition of copper ribbon after thermal treatment was analyzed by ICP-MS (Inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry) and the purity of copper was found to be obtained up to about 96 wt.% regardless of temperatures. The cross-sectional area of the specimen was also examined by SEM (scanning electron microscopy) and EDX (energy dispersive X-ray microscopy).

Development of New Device and Process to Recover Valuable Materials from Spent Solar Module

“…Because of this, serious problems such as environmental pollution and energy exhaustion occurred. To solve this environmental and energy problems, much research about new and renewable energy area is under progress [3]. Especially, solar photovoltaic cell that uses sunlight energy is suddenly rising as main interested target and IEA(International Energy Agency) predicted that solar photovoltaic cell will emerge as main power generation in 2050 [4].…”

“…Therefore, when incinerating and reclaiming solar photovoltaic module, much of environmental pollution is expected and handling fee will also be enormous. Also, if valuable metals which are disappeared through open dumping such as silicon, cooper, tin, or silver are collected and materialized, it is suggestive because it can contribute to localization of economic resources [9][10][11][12].…”