Recycling Solar Modules, Is the Way to Go for Disposing solar Modules for the future

Solar modules are an important part of a greener world, however, recycling solar modules are still an issue and right now. the world doesn’t know how to deal with them after their life expectancy ends. 

The biggest problem of recycling is that most nations worldwide lack the proper regulation on how to deal with waste. This really isn’t an issue right now but it will be in the near future. Hopefully this will change in the future because of the influx in the amount of waste, as most of the solar modules were deployed in early 2000 and mostly last up to 25 years.

According to the International Renewable Energy Agency by the year 2050, almost 78 million metric tons of solar modules will reach their end of life (EoL). This would stand for annual solar module waste to reach nearly 6 million metric tons. The latter number seems very small compared to the total e-waste humanity produces each year.

Recycling solar modules have many environmental advantages as well as economical ones. It reduces carbon footprint and the amount of potentially harmful substances (eg. cadmium, and selenium) that will affect the environment in the case of landfilling modules.

In case of the economical aspect, It can also help to reuse some of the rare materials (eg. silver, tellurium, and indium) in the future, and it can make them available to the market again. 

The ITRPV (International Technology Roadmap for Photovoltaic) predicts that, by 2030, the total material value recovered from PV recycling can reach USD 450 million. With this amount of money, it is possible to produce 60 million PV modules (18 GW).  

Keywords: Economic, Environment, Waste, Environmental, Economical, Green, Recycle, Recycling, Solar PV, Worldwide, End of Life (EoL).

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Source: @ wired @ intechopen @Solar_Edition
Photo: @Solar_Edition
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