French start-up Rosi Solar has developed an industrial solution claimed to be capable of recovering high purity silicon, silver and copper contained in end-of-life PV modules. The company’s technology is based on a pyrolysis process that makes it possible to isolate the different metals from t Contact online >>
French start-up Rosi Solar has developed an industrial solution claimed to be capable of recovering high purity silicon, silver and copper contained in end-of-life PV modules. The company’s technology is based on a pyrolysis process that makes it possible to isolate the different metals from the cells.
Image: Rosi Solar
Grenoble-based company Rosi Solar has developed a novel solution for recycling and reusing raw materials from the photovoltaic industry.
In particular, the start-up has set up a thermal and chemical separation process to recover ultra-pure silicon and other metals lost during the production of photovoltaic cells and at the end of the life of solar panels.
Rosi Solar was launched in 2017 and, since then, it has attracted the interest of many companies and institutions that now support it: French environment and energy agency Ademe, the French national investment bank BPIFrance, French environmental services provider Veolia, and European Union programs in particular.
The company''s technology is based on a pyrolysis process that makes it possible to isolate the different metals from the cells. Pyrolysis is generally used for temperature decomposition of organic material in the absence of oxygen. This process is known to provide excellent rate capability and high cycling stability. It is used in the chemical industry to produce ethylene, carbon and chemicals from petroleum, coal and even wood, in addition to producing coke from coal.
"Silver represents less than 0.1% of the components of a solar module but it constitutes a big portion of its value," Yun Luo, co-founder and president of Rosi Solar told pv magazine, noting that the same concept applies, to a lesser extent, to silicon, copper or even glass when it is of superior quality, or rather, high purity. "Our innovative process separates the metals and cells in a way that retains the purity of the material,” she stated.
After several years of research and partnerships the company is now moving to the industrial deployment of its low-environmental impact recycling solution. With national players and, often, within European initiatives, it aims to promote its technologies for the purification of silicon and silver from used PV cells so as to create a market around the recovery of high-purity materials in the solar industry.
In France, its breakthrough technology, associated with the logistics and pre-processing services of Envie 2E Aquitaine, was selected by Sorem in July 2021 in a call for tenders to upgrade end-of-life photovoltaic (PV) modules. In its new plant at La Mure in Isère, the company will process laminates without glass, to extract silicon and metals. “This is our first major commercial contract,” said Luo, adding that the construction of the site began in July 2021, for commissioning planned by the fourth quarter of 2022. Eventually, the plant could recycle around 3,000 tons of solar panels per year, which corresponds to about three tons of silver and 90 tons of silicon.
In Germany, Rosi Solar is participating in the ReProSolar project led by a Veolia subsidiary in Germany, with the participation of Flaxres, Evonik, Technalia, and the French National Center for Scientific Research, which aims to separate, for the first time, all the components of PV modules in order to demonstrate the challenge of high value-added recycling of solar panels on an industrial scale. The EU is notably supporting the project with a contribution of €4.8 million via EIT Rawmaterials, which aims to significantly enhance innovation in the raw materials sector by sharing knowledge, information and expertise.
"We are at the beginning of a tsunami with regard to the PV module recycling market," explained Luo, who foresees growth.
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Despite being promoted for decades as an essential tool in our fight against climate change, solar panels are far from environmentally safe. Solar panels only have a lifespan of around 25-30 years before they are generally discarded into landfill.
And, as our push for solar power intensifies, so too does their production and therefore waste. SolarPower Europe estimates that solar panel production in Europe grew by 47 percent in 2022. The EU installed a record-breaking 41.4 gigawatts of solar this year, which is roughly enough to provide power to 12.4 million homes. While it''s unequivocally a good thing that solar panels are being installed and more renewable power is being generated, this means that billions of panels will eventually need to be disposed of and replaced. And, this is only set to rise. It''s estimated that eight million metric tonnes of solar panels will have reached the end of their working lives by 2030, a number which is projected to rise to 80 million tonnes by 2050 according to a report by Nature Energy.
That presents an enormous environmental problem. Made from precious metals, glass, and, most of all, crystalline silicon, solar (PV) panels also contain toxic materials such as lead which can pollute the environment when they are dumped into landfill after they reach the end of their lives. Importantly, they also contain valuable materials that could be reused or recycled, however until now, these resources are predominantly wasted.
Energy experts across the board are calling for urgent government action to prevent a looming global environmental disaster. Ute Collier, deputy director of the International Renewable Energy Agency, says;
“It’s going to be a waste mountain by 2050, unless we get recycling chains going now We’re producing more and more solar panels — which is great — but how are we going to deal with the waste?”
The industry''s current capacity is currently badly underprepared for the vast deluge of solar panel waste that is expected to come. And, as usual, money is a primary issue. While panels contain small amounts of valuable materials such as silver, they contain far more glass, which is low-value, difficult and expensive to transport, meaning that the financial incentive to invest in solar panel recycling has been historically low. To put it into perspective, according to global sources, it costs an estimated 20–30 dollars to recycle one solar panel, whereas sending that same panel to a landfill would cost a mere 1–2 dollars.
Luckily, a relatively small project is making a lot of heat in the solar recycling industry. French start-up ROSI has developed the Ramp-PV project for recycling raw materials from solar panels at the end of their lifespan, even receiving the EU''s first "Industry of the Future Award" for technological research. After securing 700,000 euros from Horizon, the EU’s research and innovation funding programme, the two-year project has bolstered ROSI''s goal to become a world leader in the reuse of silicon and silver from photovoltaic (PV) waste.
To date, ROSI has been developing the processes and technologies for extracting high-purity materials from PV waste, reintegrating them into key industries, including back into solar. They plan to open the first recycling plant of its kind in Grenoble, France in early 2024 before expanding to Germany, Italy and Spain soon after.
This year, the French plant is expected to recycle around 3,000 tonnes of solar panels, extracting 90 tonnes of silicon, 30 tonnes of copper and 2.5 tonnes of silver. By 2025, the plant''s recycling capacity is projected to rise to 10,000 tonnes. The mass of recovered silicon will be reverted back into new solar panels, with other uses such as semiconductors and batteries also being considered. The recovered copper and silver be recycled across a variety of other industries, generating important income for the EU.
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