太陽能電池板 - 即將發生的生態災難？ (2/2)

Recently Yahoo News on-line reported the following:

Solar panels - an eco-disaster waiting to happen? (2/2)

Daniel Gordon - The Climate Question podcast, BBC Sounds

Sat, June 3, 2023 at 4:01 p.m. PDT

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Recycling challenges

The reason there are so few facilities for recycling solar panels is because there has not been much waste to process and reuse until recently.

The first generation of domestic solar panels is only now coming to the end of its usable life. With those units now approaching retirement, experts say urgent action is needed.

"Now is the time to think about this," says Ms. Collier.

France is already a leader among European nations when it comes to processing photovoltaic waste, says Nicolas Defrenne. His organization, Soren, partners with ROSI and other firms, co-ordinating the decommissioning of solar panels all over France.

"The biggest one [we decommissioned] took three months," Mr Defrenne recalls.

His team at Soren has been experimenting with different ways of recycling what they collect: "We're throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks."

At ROSI's high-tech plant in Grenoble, the solar panels are painstakingly taken apart to recover the precious materials inside - such as copper, silicon and silver.

Each solar panel contains only tiny fragments of these precious materials and those fragments are so intertwined with other components that, until now, it has not been economically viable to separate them.

But because they are so valuable, extracting those precious materials efficiently could be a game-changer, says Mr Defrenne.

"Over 60% of the value is contained in 3% of the weight of the solar panels," he says.

The team at Soren are hopeful that, in the future, nearly three-quarters of the materials needed to make new solar panels - including silver - can be recovered from retired PV units and recycled - to help speed up production of new panels.

Currently there is not enough silver available to build the millions of solar panels which will be required in the the transition from fossil fuels, says Mr Defrenne: "You can see where you have a production bottleneck, it's silver."

Meanwhile British scientists have been trying to develop similar technology to ROSI.

Last year, researchers at the University of Leicester announced they had worked out how to extract silver from PV units using a form of saline.

But so far, ROSI is the only company in its field to have scaled up its operation to industrial levels.

Moreover, the technology is expensive. In Europe, importers or producers of solar panels are responsible for disposing of them when they become expendable. And many favour crushing or shredding the waste - which is far cheaper.

Mr Defrenne acknowledges that intensive recycling of solar panels is still in its infancy. Soren and its partners recycled just under 4,000 tonnes of French solar panels last year.

But there is potential to do a lot more. And he's making that his mission.

"The weight of all the new solar panels sold last year in France was 232,000 tonnes - so, by the time those wear out in 20 years, that's how much I'll need to collect every year.

"When that happens, my personal goal is to ensure France will be the technological leader of the world."

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回收的挑戰

回收太陽能電池板的設施如此之少的原因是直到最近, 需要處理和再利用的廢物不多。

第一代家庭用太陽能電池板的使用壽命到現在才完結。 隨著這些電池板即將退役，專家表示需要採取緊急行動。

Collier女士說: “現在是考慮這個問題的時候了” 。

Nicolas Defrenne 說，在處理光伏廢料方面，法國已經在歐洲國家中處於領先地位。 他的組織 Soren 與 ROSI 和其他公司合作，協調法國各地太陽能電池板的回收。

Defrenne 先生回憶道: “[我們回收]最大的一個花了三個月時間” 。

他在 Soren 的團隊一直在試驗不同的方法來處理回收回來的東西： “我們把所有東西都扔向牆上，看看有什麼能粘住。”

在 ROSI 位於 Grenoble 的高科技工廠，太陽能電池板經過精心拆解，以回收其中的珍貴材料，例如銅、矽和銀。

每個太陽能電池板只有含小量這些細微碎小的珍貴材料，而且這些碎片與其他組件交織在一起，直到現在，將它們分離在經濟上都不實際可行。

Defrenne 先生說, 由於它們非常有價值，如能有效地提取這些珍貴材料可能會改變遊戲規則。

他說: “太陽能電池板超過 60% 的價值包含在3% 的重量中” 。

Soren 的團隊希望，在未來，製造新太陽能電池板所需的近四分之三的材料（包括銀）可以從退役的光伏裝置中回收並再利用，以幫助加快新電池板的生產。

Defrenne 先生說，白銀是從化石燃料轉化出來, 目前沒有足夠的白銀製造出數百萬塊太陽能電池板： “你可以看到生產製頸位在哪裡，那就是白銀。”

與此同時，英國科學家一直在嘗試開發與 ROSI 類似的技術。

去年，萊斯特大學的研究人員宣布他們已經研究出如何使用一種鹽水從光伏裝置中提取銀。

但到目前為止，ROSI 是該領域唯一的一家將運營規模擴大到工業水平的公司。

此外，該技術是昂貴的。 在歐洲，太陽能電池板的進口商或生產商有責任在它們變得無用時對其進行處理。 許多人讚成粉碎或切碎廢物 - 這是便宜得多。

Defrenne 先生承認，太陽能電池板的密集回收仍處於起步階段。 Soren 及其合作夥伴去年回收了將近 4,000 噸的法國太陽能電池板。

但還有潛力做更的多事情。 他正在以此為使命。

“去年在法國銷售的所有新太陽能電池板的重量為 232,000 噸 - 因此，當這些電池板在 20 年內耗盡時，這就是我每年需要收集的數量。”

“當這種情況發生時，我個人的目標是確保法國成為世界技術領導者。”

So, many solar units in use now will become relatively uneconomical before reaching the end of their designed lifespan. New, more efficient units are going into the market and they will be cheaper to replace solar panels now currently in use that are only 10 or 15 years old. By 2050, we could end up with more than 200 million tonnes of solar units to be recycled globally. The de-commissioning of solar units will be a big business soon.