Upcycling End of Life Solar Panels to Lithium-Ion Batteries Via a Low Temperature Approach
Yeow Boon Tay1,2,3, Ying Sim1,4, Jeremy Ang Koon Keong1,4
1Energy Research Institute, Nanyang Technological University (ERI@N), Research Techno Plaza, X-Frontier Block Level 5, 50 Nanyang Drive, 637553, Singapore, Singapore.
Abstract:
The massive adoption of renewable energy especially photovoltaic (PVs) panels is expected to create a huge waste stream once they reach end-of-life (EoL). Despite having the highest embodied energy, present photovoltaic recycling neglects the high purity silicon found in the PV cell. Herein, a scalable and low energy process is developed to recover pristine silicon from EoL solar panel through a method which avoids energy-intensive high temperature processes. The extracted silicon was upcycled to form lithium-ion battery anodes with performances comparable to as-purchased silicon. The anodes retained 87.5 % capacity after 200 cycles while maintaining high coulombic efficiency (>99 %) at 0.5 A g-1 charging rate. This simple and scalable process to upcycle EoL-solar panels into high value silicon-based anodes can narrow the gap towards a net-zero waste economy.
