1 to 1 carbon to solar panel energy ratio.

[ZenOps]

Recycling is stupendously simple in that if you mandate that they can be recycled, but do not have the means to recycle them properly, they do stack - exceptionally well. Just like stacks of paper, they are ready to be neatly stacked and shipped anywhere where they may be adequate facilities to do so. 1.5 million panels, once you remove the frames and neatly bundle them together could probably fit on a few railcars. Literally a half of a single shipment if necessary.

Recycling a 5 gram plastic water bottle that is not managed, thrown on the street and/or one that picks up a banana peel on the way to the garbage - Is insanely difficult to recycle. Not only do you have to crush it, you have to wash it, and you have to do it - every day. By my estimation, by weight - recycling that water bottle costs more than a solar panel.

Besides, its literally a once in 15 to 25 year recycling event. Not a daily one, like water bottles. I stand by its *exceptionally easy* to recycle solar panels. I'm not even sure why anyone is talking about it. Black Friday is coming up: Buy a Canadian Renogy solar panel and then tell me its going to be hard to recycle, I just don't see it.

By my estimation: Once the plant based operators get about ten years in on the age of their solar panels, they might do a "clearance" where they sell used but still "probably got a decade left" of 70% initial output panels to the populace for 1/3 to 1/4 price (or maybe closer to free). It makes sense to put out a few cheapies to let people get a feel for it before they decide if they want to go in on it.

[davidI]

^ Again, no actual evidence to support your opinion. Why are there literally hundreds of scientific papers on the techno-economic difficulties of recycling solar waste if it's "exceptionally easy"? Maybe it's time you educate all those researchers who you assumably believe learned nothing while earning their PhDs

The International Renewable Energy Agency projected that the amount of solar panel waste could reach 78 million metric tonnes by 2050. Many governments have already identified PV panels at toxic electronic waste so it is a problem that needs to be addressed.

It seems your solution is simply to ship or sell degraded panels to the third world for them to handle, just as we do with a lot of our existing recyclable waste. Sadly, this does not ensure they'll be reycled and just means the environmental hazards will be dumped upon the poor. It's not an acceptable solution from my perspective.

[ZenOps]

I would suggest that people that think that solar will be hard to recycle are full retard then. Or possibly being funding by the endless money of the oil cartels.

https://www.reuters.com/article/silv...-idUSL8N1DV4R5

"A typical photovoltaic cell generating up to 4 watts used 0.17 grams of silver in 2014, down from 0.3 grams in 2010"

They did make a "breakthrough" a while ago, which is actually common sense. Don't use an thin width line with lead solder heaped ontop like what a 15-year old with a soldering iron would use - to connect the cells, use a one or two inch wide strip of aluminum foil thickness type idea underneath if you "insist" on using silver. Which again, you don't "have" to use. While you probably can use a 1 inch microthin strip of silver, you could use a two inch strip of much less expensive material.

Based on a 2014 panel, 4.25 grams of silver per "high quality" 100 watt solar panel is what would be used and recoverable.

https://www.911metallurgist.com/blog...owinning-sx-ew Its actually quite easy to remove pure copper from rock if you simply let it sit for a while. Tens of thousands of tons of copper are extracted in this manner nowdays from extremely hard to extract rock - no heat needed, very little energy needed, no harsh chemicals needed.

To recover silver (if that is the only part that you want to recover) I can imagine it would just be a matter of putting a few deep cuts along the backside, maybe put it through the shredder if for some reason you want to speed it up a few days, and then leaving it in an electrowinning solution for half a day at a few volts.

I believe Taseko mines in BC will be finishing off a modern electrowinning plant soon, I'm not too sure how much copper they plan on extracting in that manner - but I can imagine they also are looking at the thousands of tons range if not more. And this is metal inside of rock at 24% purity, and its definitely economical to do it with copper - silver will definitely be done.

[davidI]

Silver is obviously not the problem but since you can't take a minute to read any actual research on the subject of recycling PV panels I'm done here.

[ZenOps]

Again, I'm not even sure its worth recycling. Its SAND. 27% of the earth is silicon. Whatever you want to top as a clearcoat or glass is whatever manufacturers decide is best, but they can absolutely use materials that are easy to recycle if that is what people want. If you want to use traditional silicate glass, guess what - its SAND.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abunda...arth%27s_crust

Silicon being 700x more common than carbon. I think somewhere along the way people got confused with 1 inch CPU processors being $1,000 that general low quality silicon was somehow "expensive".

Next thing you are going to say is that we have to recycle carboard drinking straws.

To me, the ultimate solar panel would a flood filled with a low melting point molten glass, literally bind the solar cells inside the glass. Or inotherwords, half a glass pane, keep it mostly molten, lay the panel on top, and then float more glass on top. But that is definitely far off, there is no practical way to do that - yet. Advantage is, if you absolutely must have the internals you can simply shatter the glass and grind it up (recover with electrowinning), or melt it and pull the internals out (which no one will probably do) If you want to go a step further, coat the back with a micron thick layer of reflective but not conductive material, and it can double as a mirror at end of life.

It would have exactly the same strength as the windows you are looking through right now, and if those have never broken due to hail, then hail damage is definitely not an issue (In Canada, we can even do horizontal installation, exactly like windows, but not windows you look through.)

*Shudder* the hand solder and thin lines. Reminds me of the Apollo memory modules, lol.

[davidI]

^ Seems you need to read and understand more about the manufacturing of solar panels before even getting your feet wet in the recycling / disposal stage.

[speedog]

There sure appears to be a lot of armchair experts in this thread.

[ZenOps]

BTW: If the GenZ industrialists ever do perfect filled glass, I'd really like to know if you could just trace along the edges with a glass cutter, snap them off, and simply get a long edge chisel - line it up with internals, thwack it with a rubber mallet - and would it actually just split in two? Glass tends to do that, it sticks to itself and is great at "encapsulation" but when placed along other materials it tends to "slip".

Basically one side shatters into a gazillion pieces, but the other side stays completely intact.

[ZenOps]

As for non-silicon thin film applications: Well, its thin film. Literally the paint job on your car is 10x thicker, and I don't see anyone recycling the paint on their car, even if it has some exotic materials to make it shiny and colourful. I'd be willing to bet that car paints of various colours probably have dozens of carcinogens, but simply all locked away under a solid overcoat - so nobody really bothers to make sure its removed before junking it.

Just like I don't expect people to eat thin film solar panels. Nor should they drink car paint, or eat car paint chips.