Tossing worn-out solar panels into landfills may soon become electronics waste history.
Tossing worn-out solar panels into landfills may soon become electronics waste history.
By designing a recycling strategy for a new, forthcoming generation of photovoltaic solar cells – made from metal halide perovskites, a family of crystalline materials with structures like the natural mineral calcium titanate – will add a stronger dose of environmental friendliness to a green industry, according to Cornell-led research published June 24 in Nature Sustainability.
The paper shows substantial benefits to recycling perovskite solar panels, though they are still in the commercial development stage, said Fengqi You, the Roxanne E. and Michael J. Zak Professor in Energy Systems Engineering in the College of Engineering.
“When perovskite solar panels reach the end of their useful life, how do we deal with this kind of electronic waste?” said You, also a faculty fellow at the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability. “It is a new class of materials. By properly recycling it, we could potentially reduce its already low carbon footprint.
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Image: Networks of observed and predicted associations between wild and semi-domesticated mammalian hosts and known virus species. (Credit: Dr. Maya Wardeh)
