Production of renewable energy sources has considerably increased during the last two decades, especially through photovoltaic panels. With an average lifetime of a solar panel estimated at 25 years, those panels are now very close to their end of life. This represents and unprecedent waste volume to address. It is estimated that PV wastes will represent between 4% and 14% of the total electricity generation capacity installed by 2030 and 60 to 80 million tons by 2050. This huge mass represents an incredible opportunity to supply secondary materials to the EU PV industry and beyond in the next future. We estimate that the cumulative worldwide PV panel waste will represent between 2 and 8 million tons by 2030, amounting to about a 450 million USD value and enough raw material to produce 60 million new panels and by 2050.
Under the current EU directive concerning Waste of Electrical and Electronic Equipement (WEEE), 80% of the total mass of the used solar panels should be recycled. Glass is strategic to address as it represents 70% of the current mass of PV panels. EVERPV project focuses on the silicon solar cells technology since it represents more than 80% of the market. These panels contain glass, copper, silicon, encapsulant polymers and backsheet polymers (PET/PVF/PVDF). The project will address both Ethylene Vinyl Acetate (EVA) and
PolyOlefin Encapsulant (POE) as encapsulants to cover already implemented technologies as well as the emerging ones. Indeed, the majority of installed solar panels contains EVA as the encapsulant of solar modules, recovery path for this material is then strategic. In addition, one of the heaviest fractions that is not recycled in PV modules are the crosslinked encapsulant materials (EVA and POE) and the fluorinated bakcsheet polymers because of the low maturity of the involved processes. Developing a specific recycling path is key for the re-use of these polymers. To ensure that the process developed during the project will suit future PV waste, EVERPV will explore, demonstrate, and optimize several recovering and re-use routes for polymer materials. Finally, according to IRENA’s forecast in 2030, used PV modules would represent a total of 1080 tons of Ag. With a constant increase of the market value of precious metals, the PV recycling industry could achieve considerable economic benefits in the next future. EVERPV project will address the separation of silver from other metals (Cu, Si). High purity silver ingots is desired for new products. Silicon also represents a strategic material to recover due to the high purity required from solar grade silicon (4N, 99,9999% purity).
The project will cluster with other EU-funded consortia addressing the recycling of silicon (e.g. PHOTORAMA) to provide a global solution. The technology demonstrated during EVERPV project targets to process more than 3000 tons of solar panels per year, thus recovering enough raw materials to produce more than 350 000 new panels per year by 2030. EVERPV will finally demonstrate the potential for reusability of recovered materials in several industrial value chains in particular in the PV industry.
EVERPV has gathered a consortium of 16 participants from 8 countries whose expertise ranges from solar PV materials and recycling processes developped in R&D centers (CEA, CSEM, ENEA, TEC), recycler industrials (ENVIE, 9TECH), process industries and materials suppliers (SGB, DTF, DPL), PV modules manufacturing (SOLI), collecting and waste treatment organizations (SOREN, ERION), policy-making, business and training facilitators (SPE, UNITAR, BI).
