Preserving silicon (Si) purity through efficient aluminum (Al) and silver (Ag) extraction and recovery from solar cell waste

IF 6.3 2区材料科学 Q2 ENERGY & FUELS Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells Pub Date : 2025-04-07 DOI:10.1016/j.solmat.2025.113601

Mustapha Wahman , Agnieszka Surowiak , Kerstin Forsberg , Burçak Ebin , Katarzyna Berent , Patryk Szymczak

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Abstract

The large scale deployment of Si PV panels presents significant end-of-life challenges due to their limited lifespan. Effective recycling strategies are crucial to reduce the environmental impact and recovering valuable metals. This study presents a simple yet highly efficient two-stage chemical process to preserve Si purity by sequential extraction of Al and Ag from discarded Si solar cells. In the first stage, Al was dissolved with sodium hydroxide (NaOH) and then precipitated by adjusting the pH with sulfuric acid (H₂SO₄). In the second stage, the Ag was extracted with nitric acid (HNO₃), precipitated with sodium chloride (NaCl), and then reduced to metallic Ag with a glucose. Under optimized conditions, the recovery efficiency for Al and Ag was over 99 %, while the resulting Si substrate reached a purity of >99.9 %. ICP-OES, XRF, XRD, and SEM-EDS confirmed the recovered materials' high selectivity and negligible impurities, highlighting their potential for high-value industrial applications.

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通过从太阳能电池废料中高效提取和回收铝（Al）和银（Ag）来保持硅（Si）的纯度

由于硅光伏板的使用寿命有限，其大规模部署面临着重大的寿命终结挑战。有效的回收战略对于减少对环境的影响和回收有价值的金属至关重要。本研究提出了一种简单而高效的两阶段化学工艺，通过顺序提取废弃硅太阳能电池中的铝和银来保持硅的纯度。第一步用氢氧化钠（NaOH）溶解Al，然后用硫酸（H2SO4）调节pH沉淀Al。在第二阶段，用硝酸（HNO3）提取银，用氯化钠（NaCl）沉淀，然后用葡萄糖还原成金属银。在优化条件下，铝和银的回收率超过99%，硅衬底的纯度达到99.9%。ICP-OES， XRF， XRD和SEM-EDS证实了回收材料的高选择性和可忽略的杂质，突出了其高价值工业应用的潜力。

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来源期刊

Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells 工程技术-材料科学：综合

CiteScore

12.60

自引率

11.60%

发文量

513

审稿时长

47 days

期刊介绍： Solar Energy Materials & Solar Cells is intended as a vehicle for the dissemination of research results on materials science and technology related to photovoltaic, photothermal and photoelectrochemical solar energy conversion. Materials science is taken in the broadest possible sense and encompasses physics, chemistry, optics, materials fabrication and analysis for all types of materials.