Energy Blockchain and Dual-Carbon Strategy Research | Solar Panel Recycling
2021-12-02
There are billions of solar panels in the world that are about to be eliminated. If they are thrown away, a lot of the basic materials needed to make future solar panels are wasted.
It is estimated that by 2050, about 4 billion solar panels with a total weight of 78 million tons will be discarded. However, due to the design problems of the battery panels, it is not easy to obtain reusable materials from them, so it is likely that most of the battery panels are directly crushed during the recycling process. But this will contaminate the material and increase the difficulty of recycling.
The world urgently needs to design electronic products that can easily extract the materials contained in them so that we can reuse them in new products and avoid waste. If we do not change the way we use materials, it will limit the deployment of renewable and environmental technologies in the next stage of society, which is not conducive to mitigating climate change, and we will lose the materials we need.
Waste recycling
If the waste solar panels can be effectively recycled, their total value will be as high as 15 billion U.S. dollars, which can produce 2 billion new solar panels. In addition, it can create more economic benefits, because 70% of greenhouse gas emissions are related to the extraction, manufacturing and use of materials. If the world continues to extract resources from the earth, then we will not be able to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, let alone alleviate climate change.
It is important that we avoid situations where we must compete for materials due to technical problems. Otherwise, the application of technology will be further restricted and society's ability to respond to the climate crisis will be weakened. For example, semiconductor materials are not only widely used in the manufacture of computer chips, but also in the manufacture of solar panels and low-energy lighting; the magnets used in wind turbines are also used in low-carbon cars. Due to concerns about insufficient supply in the future, emerging solar technologies will use certain elements (such as indium).
Recycling has many benefits
Humans consume a lot of earth resources, but the limited earth resources cannot meet all human needs. In 2020, it is estimated that about 100 billion tons of materials will be mined from the earth, of which only 8.6% of the materials can be recycled. Therefore, the growth rate of e-waste is the fastest in the world. In 2019 alone, 53.6 million tons of e-waste was generated globally.
Recently, a report published by the sustainable development consulting company Giraffe Innovation in cooperation with Swansea University showed that in 2019, the United Kingdom produced 1.6 metric tons of e-waste. Among them are an estimated 379,000 kilograms of important materials, with a potential value of approximately 148 million pounds. Due to insufficient recycling infrastructure, imperfect disposal of scrap, and low efficiency of the recycling process, some important materials contained in the garbage will not be effectively recycled.
These materials have not been effectively recovered and recycled, which means that the current technology cannot be sustainably developed. For the 30 important materials needed for future technology, the global recycling rate is less than 1%.
The first major problem is that we prefer to glue things together, as if we have no choice but to break the product and mix it, making the materials impossible to separate. Recently, research reports on increasing the recovery of raw materials from waste electronic products have highlighted another problem, which is the difficulty of extracting key materials. First, they are few and unevenly distributed. Secondly, very complex equipment is required to determine the location of the elements. These are all issues that should be resolved before separation of materials and recycling begins. Improving equipment design is the magic weapon to win.
Obsolete products, efficient processing
In order to obtain materials and recycle them, and implement a circular economy, we need to design better products and strengthen the construction of infrastructure such as manufacturing plants and recycling stations to benefit consumers, extend product life, easy to update, and repair in time.
For emerging technologies to be truly sustainable, we should extract relevant materials from them before the products are eliminated.
When researching and developing emerging technologies, they should be combined with the circular economy, and garbage should be regarded as a kind of resource. Only in this way can it bring the greatest benefits to society and provide truly sustainable technologies.
