Solar Modules / Solar Panel Recycling Machine

The solar modules lifetime is limited about 25 years before they have to be recycled. So for many of the panels that were produced in the 1980s and 90s this time has come. But how to properly recycle the solar panel ?

Solar panel are composed of photovoltaic(PV) cells that convert sunlight to electricity, when these panels enter landfills, valuable resource go to waste. And because solar panels contain toxic materials like lead that can lead out as they break down, landfill also creates new environmental hazards.

The main components of photovoltaic modules are Aluminum Frame,tempered glass,Solar cell, EVA and Back sheet. Among them, the main component of glass is silica, secondary components are soda, limestone, magnesium oxide,alumina, mirabilite,carbon.EVA Encapsulant is mainly ethylene-EVA ethylene copolymer.The core components of solar cell are mainly monocrystalline silicon and polycrystalline silicon.  The main material of the frame is aluminum. The back sheet is composed of two-layers PVF films and one-layer PET film.  More than 90 percent of these materials can be recycled.

Recycling process

For silicon PV modules, the recycling process consists of multiple steps. After removing the (mostly) aluminium frames and the junction boxes with cables, the rest of the module – including glass, backsheet and cells – are then crushed in small pieces (<5mm).

Then the fractions are separated and sorted according to material type, at the latter the glass is separated from the EVA pieces. The digested and separated raw materials (mainly glass, foil and aluminum) now meet the requirements for further processing with regards to particle size and separation of the compounds.

The metal parts are precipitated in a three-stage process by increasing pH using sodium hydroxide. Up to 90% of a module’s glass and 95% of the semiconductor material can be recovered during this process. Waste of the aluminium frames for example can be recycled and processed into usable raw material for furniture, cell phones or again solar panel frames. The silicon cells can be re-cycled as raw material for new solar cells

As for non-silicon PV modules, such as thin-film modules, these basically need to undergo chemical treatment in order to separate the various semiconductor materials, which in best case allows up to 95% recovery of the material parts.

Final Product
The final products are aluminum frame，Glass，Metal，Silicon power，Plastic.