Design and Optimization of Photovoltaics Recycling Infrastructure

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2010

Publication Source

Environmental Science and Technology

Abstract

With the growing production and installation of photovoltaics (PV) around the world constrained by the limited availability of resources, end-of-life management of PV is becoming very important. A few major PV manufacturers currently are operating several PV recycling technologies at the process level. The management of the total recycling infrastructure, including reverse-logistics planning, is being started in Europe. In this paper, we overview the current status of photovoltaics recycling planning and discuss our mathematic modeling of the economic feasibility and the environmental viability of several PV recycling infrastructure scenarios in Germany; our findings suggest the optimum locations of the anticipated PV take-back centers. Short-term 5−10 year planning for PV manufacturing scraps is the focus of this article. Although we discuss the German situation, we expect the generic model will be applicable to any region, such as the whole of Europe and the United States.

Inclusive pages

8678-8683

ISBN/ISSN

0013-936X

Comments

Permission documentation on file.

Publisher

American Chemical Society

Volume

44

Issue

22

Peer Reviewed

yes

Link to Full Text

Share

COinS