A paid R&D opportunity that could lead to new business for Pyrogenesis is emerging: reducing the costs of recycling photovoltaic (PV) end-of-life (EOL) materials.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), through its Solar Energy Technologies Office (SETO), is researching how to reduce the costs of PV EOL.

Recycling the steel, copper, and aluminum in a retired solar panel is pretty straightforward.

But where it gets tricky is in recycling the glass, silicon, tellurium, and silver in the PV modules. According to “Solar Energy Technologies Office Photovoltaics End-of-Life Action Plan” (March 2022): there is a huge price difference between recylcing and our old friend, Mr. Hole-In-The-Ground: “Currently, the cost to recycle PV modules is around $15-$45 per module, which is higher than the landfill fee, which is $1-$5 per module.”

To this layperson, it feels like exactly the kind of research that is in Pyrogenesis’ wheelhouse, with decades of waste valorization R&D, plus its work on silicon with HPQ,  SETO has been making high six-figure grants to find ways to increase efficiency and reduce costs of dealing with PV EOL issues.

While getting, say, a $900,000 USD research grant would be nice, the real prize would be laying claim to market share of what will be a large and forever-after existing and growing market. PV units age out after about 25 years. We are now approaching the end of life of big tranche of PV modules installed during the “Cleantech 1.0” era of the early/mid 2000s. With massive new PV installations in the last five years and many more GW of installations on the way, “Annual PV module EOL volumes may reach up to 12% of annual municipal electronic waste volumes in the United States by 2050.”

SO…. Once again It’s all about cost — “making sustainability sustainable.” If shredded PV panels put through a Pyrogenesis plasma reactor could yield solar glass, silicon, and critical minerals in fewer steps, in fewer transportation miles, for fewer dollars than landfill, then there is a significant market for Pyrogenesis to address that fits what it is already working on.

Get DOE to pay for the research, then sell the resulting PV recycling services to First Solar, Tesla, and solar farm operators and the U.S. gets to reduce its reliance on virgin mining of critical minerals and imports of solar glass for its solar farms.

(Also, I suspect landfill costs will only rise, reducing the difference needing to be made up, over time.)

SOURCES:

https://www.energy.gov/eere/articles/doe-releases-action-plan-photovoltaic-systems-end-life-management

https://www.energy.gov/eere/solar/end-life-management-solar-photovoltaics

https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2022-03/Solar-Energy-Technologies-Office-PV-End-of-Life-Action-Plan_0.pdf