Recycling of end-of-life PV panels - a review of technologies

Abstract

A number of documents have been launched by the European Commission in recent years to increase the amount of renewable energy and reduce the dependence on energy sources (and CRMs) outside of European Union. Solar panels are a great source of renewable energy, and their installed capacity in EU increases each year. The lifetime of a solar panel is approximated to be 20 years, and they are starting to represent a significant group of multimaterial waste to be disposed of in the near future, therefore their recycling aimed at the recovery of valuable and critical materials becomes a crucial part of EU energy transformation. The paper presents the overview on the existing technologies used to recycle end-of-life photovoltaic panels.