The use of recycled semiconductor material in crystalline silicon photovoltaic modules production - A life cycle assessment of environmental impacts

Remanufacturing end‐of‐life silicon photovoltaics: Feasibility and viability analysis

“…13,18,[22][23][24] Recycling profitability could be enhanced by recovering other valuable materials in PV modules, such as silicon and silver with high yield, while exploring the high-value reuse of these recycled materials in new PV applications. [25][26][27] Life cycle assessment (LCA) studies have demonstrated that remanufacturing second-life PV modules with recovered silicon leads to an environmentally satisfactory outcome, mainly because this avoids environmental burdens originating from the primary production of materials. 25,[28][29][30] State-of-the-art commercial PV module manufacturing requires approximately 300-375 kWh for a new 60-cell crystalline silicon module, with more than 60% of the energy demand coming from the production of high-purity silicon wafers.…”

“…[25][26][27] Life cycle assessment (LCA) studies have demonstrated that remanufacturing second-life PV modules with recovered silicon leads to an environmentally satisfactory outcome, mainly because this avoids environmental burdens originating from the primary production of materials. 25,[28][29][30] State-of-the-art commercial PV module manufacturing requires approximately 300-375 kWh for a new 60-cell crystalline silicon module, with more than 60% of the energy demand coming from the production of high-purity silicon wafers. 29,[31][32][33] Instead of consuming significant amounts of energy to extract high-purity silicon from silicon raw material (i.e., sand), the alternative supply route, recovering high-purity silicon from EoL modules, only consumes 2-30 kWh.…”

“…14,29,34 Recovered silicon can be remelted into SoG-Si (99.9999% purity), with an additional electricity input of 10-20 kWh/module, 15,28 or the silicon wafers can be reused directly if they are recovered intact. 25,[35][36][37] As a result, reusing silicon from EoL modules to replace virgin material can reduce by more than 60% the energy required and greenhouse gas emissions from manufacturing while significantly reducing the metal depletion burden of PV module manufacturing. 25,28 A recent study compared the open-loop and closed-loop models for PV modules; closing the material flow loop was reported to reduce the global warming potential (kg CO 2eq ) by 74%.…”

“…25,[35][36][37] As a result, reusing silicon from EoL modules to replace virgin material can reduce by more than 60% the energy required and greenhouse gas emissions from manufacturing while significantly reducing the metal depletion burden of PV module manufacturing. 25,28 A recent study compared the open-loop and closed-loop models for PV modules; closing the material flow loop was reported to reduce the global warming potential (kg CO 2eq ) by 74%. 12 Hence, recycling a 2.46-MW PV system with 185 t of PV modules allows savings of approximately 1480-2220 t CO 2eq .…”

Research of the Energy Losses of Photovoltaic (PV) Modules after Hail Simulation Using a Newly-Created Testbed

“…The proposed hail impact estimation methodology can be successfully applied to study the influence of the mechanical-dynamic impact of PV modules of different structures on the technical characteristics of these modules (structural stability, power generation, etc.) [37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53]. This study employed a newly-developed hail simulation bench, which allows the value of the impact force applied to the PV module to be varied and the angle of the action of that force to be adjusted.…”