An Overview on Recycling of Photovoltaic Modules at the End of Life (EoL)

An Overview on Recycling of Photovoltaic Modules at the End of Life (EoL)

Sudiksha Srivastava

Student of B. Tech (Mechanical), Final Year from Birla Vishvakarma Mahavidyalaya (BVM) Engineering College, VB Nagar, Anand (Gujarat-India)

Abstract

“Solar energy is clean, renewable, sustainable, and cost-effective, but it also requires time to develop by individual”.

Due to the current situation of fossil fuels eradication and over-exploitation across the world. The energy demands of the world are to be fulfilled by renewable energy sources. Among these Solar energy has the maximum potential to be exploited to the maximum level to full fill the energy demands of the world. Renewable energies contribute to the environmental, social, and economic development of countries [1]. There are various of clean and renewable energy sources such as Solar, biomass, wind, hydrogen, fuel cell, nanocomposite, and supercapacitor. Each of the energy sources are suitable for specific geographical locations and can suits from region to region [6]. Since ages Sun has been praised as a vitalizer of life. The total Solar energy absorbed by Earth's atmosphere, oceans and land masses is approximately 122 PW·year = 3,850,000 exajoules (EJ) per year. Most of the world's population live in areas with insolation levels of 150–300 watts/m2, or 3.5–7.0 kWh/m2 per day [2       google- Solar Wikipedia]. Solar energy is the most secure and ubiquitous source of energy to meet the power needs after coal exploitation. In present time installation of photovoltaic (PV) Solar modules are growing extremely fast. As result of the increase, the volume of modules that reach the end of their life will grow at the same rate in the near future. Global installed PV capacity reached around 773 GW at the end of 2020 [3] and is expected to rise further to 2840 GW by 2030 and 4500 GW by 2050  [4, 5-Abstract ]. Considering an average module lifetime of 25 years, the worldwide Solar PV waste is anticipated to reach between 4%-14% of total generation capacity by 2030 and rise to over 80% (around 78 million tonnes) by 2050 [5-Abstract]. Therefore, the disposal of PV modules will become a pertinent environmental issue in the next decades. Eventually, there is plenty of room for progress in this area. This review present core reality of Photovoltaic Life Cycle, Photovoltaic Technology, Photovoltaic Recycling Process as well as global Waste Management Regulation in different countries and the Environmental & Economic Aspects of recycling. At present, PV recycling management in many countries envisages to extend the duties of the manufacturers of PV materials to encompass their eventual disposal or reuse. However, further improvements in the economic viability, practicality, high recovery rate and environmental performance of the PV industry with respect to recycling its products are indispensable. There is potential to develop new pathway for PV waste management industry development and offer employment and prospects for both public and private sector investors.

Keywords: Recycling, End of life (EoL), Photovoltaic, Waste, Regulatory, c-Si, Thin film, Life cycle