Energetica India Magazine -October 2020

SOLAR POWER time, in states that allow landfill, it typi - cally costs less than a dollar to dump a solar panel in a solid-waste landfill. The big blind spot in the US for recycling is that the cost far exceeds the revenue,” said Arizona State University solar re - searcher Meng Tao. “It’s on the order of a 10-to-1 ratio.” If a solar panel’s more valuable com - ponents—namely, the silicon and sil - ver— could be separated and puri- fied efficiently, that could improve that cost-to-revenue ratio. Many researches are being incurred to recapture the ma - terial during separation. A team lead by National Renewable Energy Laborato - ry scientists calls for the development of new recycling processes in which all metals and minerals are recovered at high purity, “named a high-value, in - tegrated recycling system”, said lead study author Garvin Heath. “High-value means we want to recover all the constit- uent materials that have value from these modules. Integrated refers to a recycling process that can go after all of these materials, and not have to cascade from one recy- cler to the next.” In addition to developing better recy - cling methods, the solar industry should be thinking about how to repurpose pan - els whenever possible. Recycle PV Solar also recertifies and resells good-condi - tion panels it receives, helps offset the cost of recycling. For the solar recycling industry to grow sustainably, it will ultimately need sup - portive policies and regulations. The EU model of having producers finance the take-back and recycling of solar panels might be a good one to emulate. But be - fore that is going to happen, we need to recognize that the problem exists and is going to get bigger. We need to face the fact that solar pan - els do fail over time, and there is a lot of them out there. And what do we do when they start to fail? It’s not right throwing that responsibility on the consumer, and that’s where we’re at right now.” Sources : Bridge to India, The Hindu, Grist, ET Energy World. 47 energetica INDIA- October_2020