Prospects of PV-Recycling in Germany

Large quantities of valuable materials are contained in end-of-life photovoltaic (EoL PV) modules, but current industrial recycling processes in Germany do not recover them. At the Fraunhofer CSP, a recycling process was demonstrated in which the silver contained in the solar cells was recovered and the silicon was purified and used to produce new crystals from 100 % recycled silicon. The crystals were processed into wafers and used to produce PERC cells with a maximum cell efficiency of 19.7 %.