Efficient and comprehensive recycling of valuable components from scrapped Si-based photovoltaic panels

The increasing scrapped Si-based photovoltaic (PV) panels has become an urgent problem, and their disposal is essential for resources utilization and environment issues. This paper proposes a comprehensive process for recycling of discarded silicon-based PV panels economically, environmentally, and efficiently. Based on the thermal properties of ethylene vinyl acetate (EVA), they are removed from the discarded PV panels at 600 °C with heating rate of 5 °C/min and maintain for one hour. The glass, solar cells, and copper strips were separated after heat treatment. Simultaneously, the solar cells were crushed into powder. Nitric acid was used to recover silver from the solar cell powder, while most of the metal impurities such as Mg, Ti and Al, were removed as well. The leaching efficiency of silver was over 96 % under the optimized conditions: HNO₃ of 4.0 mol/L, liquid-to-solid ratio of 10:1, temperature of 50 °C for 80 min. Regarding the copper strips, they were sequentially treated with 0.5 mol/L CH₃COOH and NaOH solution to remove the oxides of Pb and Sn on their surface. Subsequently, they were placed into the solution of 1.0 mol/L CuSO₄ with pH of 2 ∼ 3 to eliminate Pb and Sn. This article provides significant reference for the recycling of Si-based PV panels.