Abstract
PV waste management will gain relevance proportionally to the amounts of waste that are expected to arise with the phasing-out of old installations in the upcoming years and decades. The Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology is used here to analyze the environmental performance of photovoltaic systems and the waste management methods that have been developed recently. Several LCA studies have already been performed for PV technologies, but in most cases these do not include the end of life stage, thus there is still uncertainty about the impacts of recycling on the environmental footprint of PV electricity. The present study offers a more detailed analysis of different end-of-life approaches for the main photovoltaic technologies that are found on the market. The results from the analysis demonstrate that recycling has the potential to improve the environmental profile of PV electricity but at the same time there is room for further improvements in developing dedicated recycling technologies.
Highlights
Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), a systematic methodology which determines indicators related to impact categories that quantify the environmental burden of each phase in the lifecycle of the product
The results show that current module recycling has moderate to low influence on the Energy Payback Time (EPBT) of PV
As has been shown, dedicated recycling as presented in approach n◦ 5 and n◦ 6 carries the best potential to improve the environmental footprint of PV electricity production
Summary
Until now only small flows of PV waste have had to be handled. This has restrained the consolidation of a specialized waste processing industry due to a lack of profitability. Little is known regarding the performance of waste management schemes and the potential ecological benefits that could come along with them. Appropriate waste management is required to mitigate potential ecological impacts of the waste material. If not handled in a proper manner, critical and valuable resources might be lost and toxic materials such as lead or cadmium contained within the modules could leak into the soil and groundwater, representing a threat for biodiversity and human health. PV systems represent a potential source of valuable materials
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