Available online at www.sciencedirect.
com Current Opinion in
ScienceDirect
Recent progress and future prospects of silicon solar
module recycling
Meng Tao, Theresa Chen, Natalie Click and Randall Adcock
Abstract
Silicon solar modules are only 10–15 wt% circular with today’s
recycling technologies. A 90 wt% circularity requires that all the
inorganic materials in silicon modules be recovered for reuse in
solar or similar applications. Major technical barriers to a 90 wt
% circularity for silicon modules include: 1) removal of the
fluoropolymer back sheet; 2) detachment of silicon cells from
glass; 3) removal of the encapsulant on silicon cells; and 4)
mild chemistry and minimization of chemical waste along with
high material recovery rates. Noticeable progress in recycling
technologies in the last few years includes: 1) mechanical
milling to remove the fluoropolymer back sheet; 2) laser
debonding of the encapsulant from silicon cells; 3) dissolution
of the encapsulant with a base; 4) mild chemistry for silver and
lead recovery; and 5) regenerative chemistry to reuse some of
the chemicals in silicon cell recycling.
Addresses
Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85281, USA
Corresponding author: Tao, M. (meng.tao@asu.edu)
Current Opinion in Green and Sustainable Chemistry 2023,
44:100863
This review comes from a themed issue on Recycling of solar panels
and windmills (2023)
Edited by Peter Majewski and Pablo Dias
Available online 23 August 2023
For complete overview of the section, please refer the article
collection - Recycling of solar panels and windmills (2023)
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogsc.2023.100863
2452-2236/© 2023 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords
Silicon solar module recycling, Chemical recycling, Lead, Silver, Silicon,
Encapsulant removal.
Introduction
Solar modules have been branded as a “green” technol-
ogy. They are green in the sense of utilizing a sustainable
energy source, i.e., solar energy, to generate electricity,
but silicon (Si) solar modules are not green in the sense
of a circular economy. Today most end-of-life solar
modules are sent to landfills. First Solar provides recy-
cling services for their cadmium telluride modules, but
silicon modules have a 95% market share as of 2021 [1].
Even for those modules which go through today’s recy-
cling processes, they are only 10e15% circular by weight
(wt%) meaning that only 10e15 wt% of the materials
contained in silicon modules are recovered for reuse.
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Green and Sustainable Chemistry
This includes mainly the aluminum (Al) frame and
sometimes the copper (Cu) wires in the junction box.
The other 85e90 wt% of the materials are either land-
filled or sometimes downcycled to a construction ma-
terial containing glass, silicon solar cells, and polymers.
It has been envisioned that solar energy will become a
main energy source for the world by 2050. Such a goal
requires 30e100 TW peak (TWp) of solar modules to be
produced and installed in the next 28 years [2,3]. By the
end of 2021, the global cumulative installation of solar
modules was 0.94 TWp [4], so the installation needs to
expand about 50 times by 2050. Silicon solar modules have
a typical, manufacturer-guaranteed lifetime of 25 years. A
steady-state solar installation of 50 TWp means that 2
TWp of solar modules would reach their end-of-life each
year. A typical 300 W peak (Wp) silicon module weighs
about 18 kg, so the 2 TWp/year end-of-life silicon modules
mean over 100 megatonnes (Mt) of solar waste a year. The
100 Mt/year solar waste does not include balance-of-
system waste such as the mounting components, elec-
trical wiring, power converters, and storage batteries. With
everything included, the solar waste could exceed 200 Mt/
year shortly after 2050. To compare, the total municipal
solid waste in the US was 265 Mt in 2018 [5].
This paper analyzes recent progress and future pros-
pects to achieve a 90e95 wt% circularity for silicon
solar modules. This means that 90e95 wt% of the
materials in silicon modules are recovered for reuse in
solar or similar applications, not downcycled for less-
demanding applications. It is recognized that some
materials in silicon modules are difficult to recycle,
especially the polymers including the encapsulant and
back sheet. This analysis will focus on recent work
since 2018 in both the research community and private
sector. For reviews on silicon module recycling tech-
nologies before 2018, the readers are referred to
Refs. [6e9].
Structures of silicon solar modules and
cells
Figure 1(a) shows schematically the cross section of the
most common commercial silicon solar module today.
The major components in silicon modules include the
front glass sheet, aluminum frame, silicon solar cells,
junction box on the back (not shown in Figure 1(a)), and
polymers including the encapsulant, sheath for copper
wires, casing for the junction box, and back sheet. The
most common encapsulant is ethylene vinyl acetate
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2 Recycling of solar panels and windmills (2023)
Figure 1
Schematic cross sections of (a) silicon solar module without the junction box; (b) aluminum back-surface field cell; and (c) passivated emitter rear contact cell.
(EVA) but polyolefin may replace EVA in the future.
The back sheet is typically polyvinyl fluoride, a fluo-
ropolymer. The glass has a low iron content (below
100 parts per million (ppm)) for a high transmittance.
The junction box contains copper wires. Therefore, the
materials worth recovering at the module level are:
 Aluminum frame
 Low-iron glass
 Copper wires
 Silicon cells
The hydrocarbon polymers can be in principle recovered
as a fuel. The only material which must be landfilled is
the fluoropolymer back sheet since there is currently no
better method to deal with it.
Figure 1(b) is the schematic cross section of the
aluminum back-surface field (Al-BSF) cell which
dominated the solar market till about 2020, so this is the
silicon solar cell recyclers will process for the next 20
years. Figure 1(c) is the passivated emitter rear contact
(PERC) cell which dominates the current solar market,
so recyclers will see a small but increasing portion of this
cell. The two cells have a similar structure, except that
the PERC cell has a stack of aluminum oxide and silicon
nitride (Al2O3/Si3N4) layers sandwiched between the
silicon wafer and aluminum back electrode. The two
cells can be recycled with the same process.
In Figure 1(b) and (c), the front electrode and soldering
pads on the back are made of silver (Ag). Before module
production, multiple silicon cells are soldered in series with
copper ribbons for electrical connection. The solder is an
alloy of about 65% tin (Sn) and the rest lead (Pb). The
aluminum oxide and silicon nitride layers are extremely
thin and negligible by weight, with no value. The
aluminum back electrode is difficult to recover with little
value. Therefore, five metals are worth recovering from
silicon cells.
 Silver
 Lead
Current Opinion in Green and Sustainable Chemistry 2023, 44:100863
 Tin
 Copper ribbons
 Silicon
Out of the five metals in silicon solar cells, two are in
the must-recover category: silver and lead [7]. Silver is
a main financial incentive for recyclers. Each
156  156 mm2 Al-BSF cell contains about 0.1 g of
silver. At today’s silver price and with 100% recovery,
the silver generates roughly 8¢/cell. Lead is toxic, and
lead in the presence of EVA is a particularly bad
combination. When landfilled, EVA will decompose to
acetic acid under moisture, ultraviolet radiation, and
heat. Our group demonstrated that acetic acid is an
effective leaching agent for lead recovery from silicon
cells [10]. A 300 Wp Al-BSF module contains about
15 g of lead.
In early 2022, the US Environmental Protection Agency
revised its guidelines on end-of-life management of solar
modules [11]. Now they recommend the toxicity char-
acteristic leaching procedure (TCLP) to determine if
end-of-life solar modules are hazardous waste. One
concern about the TCLP test is that it may not be
capable of revealing the true hazard of solar modules.
The solder in silicon modules is sealed under the
encapsulant. If the encapsulant is intact, the TCLP test
may detect little lead. However, no encapsulant will last
forever when landfilled. When it decomposes, the solder
is exposed. This is the moment to see the true hazard of
silicon modules.
Each 300 Wp Al-BSF module contains about 0.55 kg of
silicon. Three different qualities of silicon can be recov-
ered [7]:
 Ferrosilicon with a minimum silicon content of 75%
 Metallurgical-grade silicon with a minimum silicon
content of 98%
 Solar-grade silicon with a minimum purity of
99.9999% or 6N
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The silicon cells, once detached from the glass with all
the metals, dielectrics, and some EVA on them
(Figure 1(b) and (c)), can be sold directly as ferrosilicon as
they contain about 80% silicon. Therefore, the recovery
rate of ferrosilicon can reach 120% of the silicon contained
in a module [12]. To recover metallurgical-grade silicon,
the EVA, metals, and dielectrics must be removed so the
maximum recovery rate is limited to 100%. To extract
solar-grade silicon, the heavily doped emitter (the orange
section in Figure 1(b) and (c)) and back-surface field (the
dark green section in Figure 1(b) and (c)) must be
removed in addition to the EVA, metals, and dielectrics.
Only the p-type base (the light green section in
Figure 1(b) and (c)) qualifies as solar-grade silicon, so the
recovery rate of solar-grade silicon is limited to about 90%.
Recovery of solar-grade silicon is preferred as it adds, at
today’s price for solar-grade silicon, 24¢/cell in revenue
for each 156  156 mm2 cell. For ferrosilicon and
metallurgical-grade silicon, the revenue is only 1e2¢/
cell. However, there are significant logistic and technical
challenges to recover solar-grade silicon, as discussed
later in this paper. Therefore, it is possible that recyclers
will stop with metallurgical-grade silicon [12].
Table 1 lists the bill of materials for a typical silicon solar
module. Glass and aluminum account for 85% of the
module weight. The silicon solar cells including silver,
lead, tin, aluminum back electrode, and copper ribbons
are about 4% of the module weight, but they contain the
two must-recover metals: precious silver and toxic lead.
Recovery of glass, aluminum, silicon, copper, tin, lead,
and silver leads to a 90 wt% circularity. If some of the
hydrocarbon polymers are recovered as a fuel, silicon
modules would become about 95 wt% circular.
Prospects of a proper recycling process for
silicon modules
Consensus seems to be emerging in the solar commu-
nity that a proper recycling process for silicon modules
involves two stages [6,7,9] as shown in Figure 2:
 The first stage involves physical disassembly of silicon
modules to recover the bulky materials including the
Table 1
Bill of materials in a typical silicon solar module [8].
Material
Glass
Al
Hydrocarbon polymers
Si cells
Back sheet
Cu
Sn
Pb
Ag
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Progress in silicon solar module recycling Tao et al. 3
copper wires, aluminum frame, low-iron glass, and
silicon cells. The recovered copper, aluminum, and
glass, which account for about 90% of the module
weight, can be remelted and reused in new silicon
modules. The silicon cells (about 5% of the module
weight) are sent to chemical recyclers for further
processing. At the end of this stage, some polymers
(3e6 wt% depending on the amount of hydrocarbon
polymers recovered as a fuel) are landfilled.
 The second stage deals with chemical recycling of the
silicon cells to recover the metals including silver,
lead, silicon (either metallurgical grade or solar grade),
and maybe tin and copper ribbons. Technically it is
possible to recover tin and copper ribbons, but re-
cyclers may opt not to for financial reasons, as recovery
of a metal incurs cost. This stage requires some nasty
chemicals and generates chemical waste.
Some of the major technical barriers to realizing the
recycling process in Figure 2 include:
 Removal of back sheet: There is currently no com-
mercial tool to remove the fluoropolymer back sheet,
which becomes an issue in subsequent processing. If a
thermal process is applied, e.g., pyrolysis of EVA, the
back sheet releases a fluorine exhaust [13]. If a
chemical process follows, e.g., dissolution of EVA, the
back sheet remains undissolved and floats in the
chemical tank, interfering with the process.
 Detachment of silicon cells from glass: Significant
efforts have been devoted to an effective detachment
technology. It is reminded that any pieces of silicon
cells in the recovered glass cullet render it unfit for
new glass products as silicon never melts during glass
production. It is also desirable to have silicon cells
recovered glass-free, as glass interferes with the
chemical cell recycling process.
 Removal of EVA: The EVA on silicon cells must be
removed to expose the cells for metal leaching. Py-
rolysis of EVA requires a large furnace to process
hundreds or even thousands of modules in each batch,
but such a furnace is not commercially ready. More-
over, pyrolysis emits carbon dioxide (CO2). An alter-
native is to chemically dissolve EVA, which is a
difficult task for a crosslinked polymer.
 Chemical cell recycling: It is difficult to recover the
metals in silicon cells through physical methods, but
Weight % some of the chemicals used in metal recovery are nasty
[6e9]: nitric acid (HNO3), hydrofluoric acid (HF),
75
10
and hydrochloric acid (HCl). More mild chemicals and
7 methods to minimize chemical waste are desirable,
4 but they must achieve a high recovery rate for lead
3 (100%) and ideally for other metals as well.
1
0.15
0.1
0.03 These barriers should be the focus of research. In
particular, removal of EVA is currently the biggest
Current Opinion in Green and Sustainable Chemistry 2023, 44:100863
4 Recycling of solar panels and windmills (2023)
Figure 2
A proper recycling process for silicon solar modules: physical module disassembly first and then chemical cell recycling.
barrier as it is a prerequisite for chemical cell recycling.
The next major barrier is to reduce the number, quan-
tity, and hazard of the chemicals used for cell recycling,
while maintaining high material recovery rates. The
following sections discuss the two stages of silicon
module recycling, with a separate section dedicated to
EVA removal.
Stage 1: physical module disassembly
Today all the recyclers strip off the aluminum frame.
Some also cut off the junction box. There are two
methods to remove the plastics and extract the copper
wires. The junction box can be sent to a copper smelter
where it goes through several high-temperature pro-
cesses of about 1500  C and an electrorefining process to
recover copper. The alternative is to mechanically
remove the plastic sheath and casing, and the recovered
copper goes through one high-temperature process to
remelt for new copper wires. The plastic casing and
sheath, if they do not contain chlorine or fluorine, can be
collected as a fuel.
After the removal of junction box and aluminum frame,
the remaining module has a layered structure
(Figure 1(a)). The next step is to separate the glass,
silicon cells, and ideally the back sheet as well. However,
no recyclers today separate the back sheet from mod-
ules. In principle, the fluoropolymer back sheet can be
peeled off when the EVA is heated and softened, but
there is no commercial tool to perform the job. Fiandra
Current Opinion in Green and Sustainable Chemistry 2023, 44:100863
et al. [13] reported a mechanical milling method to
remove the back sheet, which seems attractive.
There are currently two approaches to detach silicon
cells from glass, with the back sheet attached to the
silicon cells in most cases. The more successful
approach is knife cutting through the EVA between the
glass and silicon cells. Many studies also take a crushing
and physical separation approach.
Knife cutting of EVA
Knife cutting requires an elevated temperature to
soften the EVA. NPC Inc. in Japan has a commercial tool
which employs a heated steel blade to cut through the
EVA [14]. A European Union funded project employs
infrared lamps to heat the module before knife cutting
of the EVA [15]. The NPC tool does a good job in
separating glass and silicon cells; it creates a clean glass
sheet with some EVA and a sheet of silicon cells lami-
nated together by EVA and back sheet. There is no
commercial tool based on the infrared lamp technology.
There are still questions about these knife cutting tools:
 They do not remove the back sheet, which is still
attached to silicon cells.
 The knife is made of steel so it may increase the iron
content in the recovered glass cullet. Currently the
recovered glass is not used for new solar glass sheets.
To do that, the iron content in the recovered glass
cullet must be below 100 ppm.
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 The lifetime of the steel blade is limited as it endures
wear and tear against glass.
Crushing and physical separation
With the junction box and aluminum frame gone, most
of the recyclers today crush the remaining module which
contains largely glass with silicon cells and polymers.
Often the crushed modules are sent to landfills as glass
manufacturers refuse them. Occasionally, the crushed
modules are used as a construction material such as a
concrete aggregate. Therefore, many studies explore
physical methods to further process crushed modules
and separate glass and silicon cells. It is important to
note that none of the physical methods have shown
100% material separation and some of the fluoropolymer
back sheet remains on silicon cells.
Veolia opened its facility dedicated to silicon module
recycling in France in 2018 [16]. After module crush-
ing, they further grind the crushed modules and then
use an optical sensor to separate transparent glass and
opaque silicon. However, fine tuning of their optical
separation process is needed as their recovered glass
cullet contains silicon and their recovered silicon cells
contain glass. Dias et al. [17] investigated electrostatic
separation of crushed silicon modules, where the
separated materials were collected in three pans. They
were able to concentrate most glass in one pan, most
polymers in a second pan, and most silicon and some
polymers in a third pan, but not 100%. For example,
silver was found in all three pans. Tokoro et al. [18]
employed selective grinding to separate glass from
polymers. Crushed modules were processed with
gravity separation to extract silver concentrates, mag-
netic separation for iron concentrates, and sieving to
obtain glass concentrates. Glass was liberated from
polymers using eccentric grinding. It is noted that
separation of glass from polymers is not necessary if
the glass cullet contains only EVA. When the glass
cullet is remelted for new glass products, the EVA
vaporizes.
Several groups explored high-voltage pulse crushing of
silicon modules for material separation [19e22], which
is different from the traditional mechanical crushing. A
silicon module is placed in water between two elec-
trodes, and hundreds of high-voltage pulses in excess of
100 kV break the module into particles of different sizes.
It was found that fewer high-voltage pulses separate the
silicon module into glass with silicon cells and back
sheet, and repeated high-voltage pulses further break
the module down to particles [19]. Sieving and some-
times floatation separate particles of different sizes and
densities. Various metals are more concentrated in par-
ticles of different sizes, but not 100%. It is determined
that high-voltage pulse crushing at 160 kV for 300 pulses
results in an energy consumption of 193 J/g [22].
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Progress in silicon solar module recycling Tao et al. 5
Stage 1.5: removal of EVA
Removal of EVA plays a dual role in silicon module
recycling:
 When applied to silicon modules, it enables detach-
ment of silicon cells from glass. A subsequent step is
required to separate silicon cells and glass.
 When applied to detached silicon cells, it exposes
silicon cells for metal leaching.
Therefore, it can be part of the module disassembly
stage or the cell recycling stage. For this reason, a
dedicated section to EVA removal is warranted. Tradi-
tionally there are two approaches to remove EVA from
silicon modules or cells: pyrolysis or dissolution. It is
reminded that removal of EVA for detachment of silicon
cells from glass does not necessarily lead to 100% ma-
terial separation as it requires a subsequent step to
separate the detached cells and glass.
Pagnanelli et al. [23] used an organic solvent to detach
silicon cells from glass. Silicon modules were crushed
and sieved. Coarse particles were treated with cyclo-
hexane at 40e60  C for 1 h. Glass, copper ribbons, sil-
icon cells with EVA, and back sheet were largely
separated. This process has been demonstrated at a pilot
scale [24]. Azeumo et al. [25] investigated several
organic solvents (toluene, xylene, 2,4-trimethylpentane,
n-heptane, and N,N-dimethylformamide) for detach-
ment of silicon cells from glass. Silicon modules were
crushed first. After multiple physical processes such as
floatation and magnetic separation, concentrates of
polymers, metals, and glass were obtained. The glass
concentrates were treated with organic solvents.
Toluene was found to produce 100% detachment in 1 h
at 60  C. To speed up the organic solvent process, Pang
et al. [26] applied microwave and found that the
detachment ratio was improved by 10%. They tested
several organic solvents (methanol, ethanol, ethylene
glycol, toluene, trichloroethylene, and acetic acid) with
microwave and trichloroethylene was found to be most
effective. Two groups [27,28] applied supercritical CO2
with or without an organic solvent. 100% detachment
was not achieved so peeling after supercritical CO2
treatment was needed.
Fiandra et al. [13] performed pyrolysis to remove EVA
after milling off the fluoropolymer back sheet. The op-
timum conditions for complete pyrolysis of EVA are
500  C for 1 h. Xu et al. [29] combined organic solvent
and pyrolysis to detach largely intact silicon cells from
glass. Small silicon modules up to 50  50 mm2 were
treated with pressurized toluene at 190  C for 2 h. When
the toluene-treated modules were placed in a furnace at
500  C for complete pyrolysis of the EVA and back
sheet, most silicon cells were extracted intact.
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6 Recycling of solar panels and windmills (2023)
Yan et al. [30] reported potassium hydroxide (KOH)
plus ethanol to dissolve EVA. This is a new method as
EVA dissolution had been using either an organic solvent
or acid. Small pieces of silicon modules were placed in
the basic solution and heated to 200  C for 3 h in an
autoclave. 100% detachment was observed. This
chemistry is more environmentally friendly as it does
not emit CO2 and is less hazardous than many organic
solvents.
An interesting process to separate EVA from silicon cells
was reported by Li et al. using laser debonding [31]. The
aluminum frame and junction box were removed first,
followed by heating the remaining module to peel off
the back sheet. A laser with a wavelength absorbed by
silicon but not EVA was scanned across the module to
debond the EVA layer from the silicon cell. The EVA
layer was then peeled off after a corner of the layer was
separated from the silicon cell by scratching it with a
knife. This process should apply to the debonding of the
front EVA layer from silicon cells as well since the glass
is also transparent to the laser wavelength. One question
is about the throughput: how long does it take to process
an entire module?
Table 2 compares the different methods for EVA
removal on detached silicon cells from glass. Organic
solvents are unlikely to be used in commercial-scale
recycling due to their toxicity. Meanwhile, pyrolysis,
base dissolution, and laser debonding are still in the
race.
Stage 2: chemical cell recycling
Once silicon cells are detached from glass, cell recycling
can be performed. These cells contain not only the
structures in Figure 1(b) and (c), but also copper rib-
bons with solder. There are two approaches today for cell
recycling: pyrometallurgical or hydrometallurgical. Sili-
con cells can be sent to a copper smelter for the recovery
of silver and copper, but silicon, lead, and tin are not
recovered by smelting. The copper smelter is not
Table 2
Comparison of methods for EVA removal on detached silicon
cells from glass.
Method Variations Issues
Organic solvent  Heating [23,25]  Toxic solvents
 Microwave [26]  Slow process
 Supercritical  Chemical waste
CO2 [27,28]
Pyrolysis  Pyrolysis only [13]  CO2 emissions
 Organic solvent [29]  High energy input
Base dissolution  KOH or NaOH [31]  Slow process
 Chemical waste
Laser debonding  n/a [31]  Slow process?
 Broken modules?
Current Opinion in Green and Sustainable Chemistry 2023, 44:100863
designed for silicon cell recycling, and silicon cells are
just added to the smelter with copper ores. It is
reminded that the fluoropolymer back sheet is still
attached to the silicon cells. Based on conversations with
recyclers, the silver recovery rate by smelting is about
65%, i.e., about $1.60 worth of silver per module is not
recovered by smelting.
The second approach is chemical processing. It requires
the EVA on the silicon cells to be removed first. Once
the cell surface is exposed, metals are leached and
recovered first, and then silicon of metallurgical grade or
solar grade is extracted. Nasty chemicals are often
required in hydrometallurgy [6e9]:
 HNO3 is the most common leaching agent for metals.
 HF is used to etch off the Si3N4 layer.
 Either sodium hydroxide (NaOH) or a mixture of
HNO3 and HF etches off the emitter and back-
surface field to recover the silicon base as solar
grade silicon (Figure 1(b) and (c)).
Therefore, mild chemistry and minimization of chemi-
cal waste are two topics of high priority in chemical cell
recycling, along with high recovery rates for metals.
Lead must be removed 100% from the chemical waste,
and 100% silver recovery is preferred.
Metal recovery
ROSI, a French startup, claims “soft chemistry” to
recover solar-grade silicon and silver from silicon cells
[32], although no detail has been provided. Chung et al.
[33] developed an iodine plus potassium iodide (I2-KI)
chemistry to leach silver and aluminum from silicon
cells. Leached aluminum can be precipitated out first
when the leachate pH is adjusted to 9.6, and silver is
recovered with sodium borohydride (NaBH4) as the
reducing agent. However, the recovered silver contains
more impurities than silver: sodium, iodine, and a little
aluminum. Zante et al. [34] leached silver and
aluminum from silicon cells using redox catalysts.
Aluminum is leached first in an aqueous solution of iron
(III) chloride (FeCl3). Silver is then leached out with
copper (II) chloride (CuCl2) in an aqueous solution of
choline chloride. Under optimized conditions, 95% of
the silver and aluminum is dissolved within 10 min. It is
also possible to regenerate the chemicals for reuse in the
leaching process by evaporating the excess water.
However, the recovered silver is silver chloride (AgCl),
which requires further processing to obtain metallic
silver.
Electrochemistry has also been applied to metal re-
covery from silicon cells. Modryzynski et al. [35]
electrochemically leached silver, copper, and tin from
silicon cells in sulfuric acid (H2SO4). With a boron-
doped diamond electrode, peroxydisulfate (S2 O28 )
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was produced for metal leaching. Electrowinning
recovered pure metals from the leachate. However, the
leaching rate is slow and the presence of S2 O28 in-
terferes with silver and tin electrowinning. It is also
unclear how large the diamond electrode can be for
commercial-scale recycling. Deng et al. [36] reported a
different electrochemical leaching method, in which a
silicon cell serves as the anode and a silver coil as the
cathode. Only the front surface of the silicon cell is in
contact with the electrolyte which is silver nitrate
(AgNO3). Over 95% of the silver is recovered within a
few minutes. However, this method does not recover
the silver soldering pads on the back of the cell. It may
also be difficult to implement it in commercial-scale
recycling. TG Companies, a startup in Arizona, has
developed a regenerative chemistry for sliver recovery
[37], i.e., the acid for silver leaching is regenerated
later in the process during electrowinning and then
reused in silver leaching.
Chen et al. [38] reported a leaching, solvent extraction,
and precipitation process to recover AgCl and hydrox-
ides of lead, copper, and tin (Pb(OH)2, Cu(OH)2, and
Sn(OH)2). They used HCl plus hydrogen peroxide
(H2O2) to selectively leach lead, copper, and tin from
ribbons extracted from silicon modules. To completely
remove the solder and obtain pure copper ribbons, they
attempted two methods: 1) sodium chloride (NaCl) was
added to HCl for complete lead leaching and 2) the
ribbons were oxidized at 800  C and then polished to
remove the oxidized solder. The chloride leachate
contained three metals, lead, copper, and tin. Tributyl
phosphate was added first to extract tin, and then
LIX984N was added to extract copper, leaving only lead
in the leachate. Ammonium hydroxide (NH4OH) was
added to the three solutions to obtain hydroxides of the
three metals. Silver was recovered through HNO3
leaching and NaCl precipitation. This process illustrates
the downside of conventional chemical recycling, i.e.,
the large number of chemicals needed and thus large
quantities of chemical waste generated. In contrast,
electrowinning after leaching requires a far fewer
number of chemicals.
There is a non-chemical method to recover silver from
silicon cells [39]. Silicon cells extracted from modules
were placed in water. Electrical contacts were made to
the copper ribbons and a 15 kV pulse was applied across
the copper ribbons causing the silver front electrode to
explode. However, the recovered particles contained
less than 5 wt% of silver.
Not many studies focused on lead recovery from silicon
cells. Besides HNO3, acetic acid (CH3COOH) plus
H2O2 is an effective and mild leaching agent for lead
[10]. 24-hour electrowinning of the acetic leachate re-
sults in 99% lead recovery, but the recovered lead in-
cludes various lead oxides and acetates in addition to
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Progress in silicon solar module recycling Tao et al. 7
metallic lead. Further processing is needed to obtain all
the lead in the metallic form.
Silicon recovery
It is uncertain at this time about the quality of silicon
that recyclers will recover: ferrosilicon, metallurgical-
grade silicon, or solar-grade silicon. Recovery of solar-
grade silicon is preferred as it generates a much higher
revenue and cuts down the energy consumption signif-
icantly as the recovered silicon bypasses the energy-
intensive Siemens process for silicon purification, but
it requires a complicated process with a high cost. On
the other hand, there are concerns about the purity of
the recovered solar-grade silicon not matching virgin
silicon, which would degrade the efficiency of the silicon
cell. More importantly, there are several logistic barriers
to the recovery of solar-grade silicon [12].
While most of the silicon modules on the market employ
p-type silicon wafers, a small portion of them are n-type
silicon. This information about module type is often lost
with end-of-life modules since they were produced 25
years ago and the manufacturers are long gone. When p-
type modules and n-type modules are mixed, the
recovered silicon contains both p-type and n-type. The
mixed p-type and n-type silicon automatically down-
grades itself to metallurgical-grade silicon [7]. In addi-
tion, convincing silicon ingot manufacturers to take in
the recovered solar-grade silicon is a difficult task. They
want a stable feedstock with consistent quality control,
but recyclers have little control over the quantity and
consistency of the incoming end-of-life modules.
Nevertheless, the process to recover silicon of different
qualities is summarized here:
 The silicon cells detached from glass can be sold
directly as ferrosilicon without any further processing.
Since the fluoropolymer back sheet is still on the cells,
caution must be taken if the cells will go through a
high-temperature process.
 For metallurgical-grade silicon, silicon cells after
metal recovery are submerged in HF to remove Si3N4
and NaOH to remove aluminum.
 To extract solar-grade silicon, the silicon wafers after
removal of Si3N4 and aluminum are further treated
with NaOH or a mixture of HF and HNO3 to remove
the emitter and back-surface field.
Deng et al. [36] reported a 4N purity for the recovered
silicon. It is possible that the back-surface field was not
completely removed, leading to the lower purity. With
only KOH, Chen et al. [38] reported a 2N purity. By
monitoring the NaOH etching process, TG Companies
was able to recover silicon of a 6N purity [37]. Induc-
tively coupled plasma mass spectrometry and glow
discharge mass spectrometry by a third party both
Current Opinion in Green and Sustainable Chemistry 2023, 44:100863
8 Recycling of solar panels and windmills (2023)
confirmed that all the impurities in recovered silicon,
except the dopant in the base, are below the detection
limit of 0.03 ppm.
Since recovery of solar-grade silicon might be chal-
lenging and metallurgical-grade silicon generates a low
revenue (about 2¢/cell), other more valuable applica-
tions for the recovered silicon are worth pursuing. Zhang
et al. [40] explored a silicon anode for lithium-ion bat-
tery from recovered silicon. After removing all the non-
silicon layers, the silicon wafers were milled and then
converted to porous silicon through electrochemical
alloying and dealloying with lithium in a molten salt of
lithium chloride and potassium chloride (LiCleKCl).
The porous silicon anode shows good performance with
a capacity of 2427.7 mAh/g at 1 A/g after 200 cycles with
a capacity retention rate of 91.5%.
Summary
Recent progress in silicon solar module recycling in both
the research community and private sector is reviewed.
Some of the more noticeable progress includes: 1) me-
chanical milling to remove the fluoropolymer back
sheet; 2) laser debonding of the EVA layer from silicon
cells; 3) dissolution of EVA with a base; 4) mild chem-
istry for silver and lead recovery; and 5) regenerative
chemistry to minimize chemical waste. These results
may lead to practical solutions for several technical
barriers in silicon module recycling, facilitating a 90e
95 wt% circularity for silicon modules with an environ-
mentally and financially sound recycling process.
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare the following financial interests/
personal relationships which may be considered as po-
tential competing interests: Meng Tao reports a rela-
tionship with TG Companies LLC that includes: equity
or stocks.
Data availability
Data will be made available on request.
Acknowledgments
This work is supported by the US Department of
Energy through the REMADE Institute, grant no. 21-
01-RR-5014. MT is grateful to Dr. P. Sinha of First Solar
for many insightful discussions.
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Current Opinion in Green and Sustainable Chemistry 2023, 44:100863