Potential Cd emissions from end-of-life CdTe PV

Raugei, Marco; Isasa, Marina; Palmer, Pere Fullana

doi:10.1007/s11367-011-0348-9

Cited by 17 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 20 publications

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“…Moreover, practitioners often adopt assumptions that underestimate long-term emissions (Turner et al, 2017). This is especially critical when assessing EOL options of products containing heavy metals such as electronics and batteries (Rydh and Karlström, 2002;Raugei et al, 2012). The regionalized IMPACT world+ method, however, alleviates some of those issues (Bulle et al, 2019).…”

Section: Assessing Scope and Temporal Resolutionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Do We Need a New Sustainability Assessment Method for the Circular Economy? A Critical Literature Review

Walzberg¹,

Lonca²,

Hanes³

et al. 2021

Front. Sustain.

112

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The goal of the circular economy (CE) is to transition from today's take-make-waste linear pattern of production and consumption to a circular system in which the societal value of products, materials, and resources is maximized over time. Yet circularity in and of itself does not ensure social, economic, and environmental performance (i.e., sustainability). Sustainability of CE strategies needs to be measured against their linear counterparts to identify and avoid strategies that increase circularity yet lead to unintended externalities. The state of the practice in quantitatively comparing sustainability impacts of circular to linear systems is one of experimentation with various extant methods developed in other fields and now applied here. While the proliferation of circularity metrics has received considerable attention, to-date, there is no critical review of the methods and combinations of methods that underlie those metrics and that specifically quantify sustainability impacts of circular strategies. Our critical review herein analyzes identified methods according to six criteria: temporal resolution, scope, data requirements, data granularity, capacity for measuring material efficiency potentials, and sustainability completeness. Results suggest that the industrial ecology and complex systems science fields could prove complementary when assessing the sustainability of the transition to a CE. Both fields include quantitative methods differing primarily with regard to their inclusion of temporal aspects and material efficiency potentials. Moreover, operations research methods such as multiple-criteria decision-making (MCDM) may alleviate the common contradictions which often exist between circularity metrics. This review concludes by suggesting guidelines for selecting quantitative methods most appropriate to a particular research question and making the argument that while there are a variety of existing methods, additional research is needed to combine existing methods and develop a more holistic approach for assessing sustainability impacts of CE strategies.

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Section: Assessing Scope and Temporal Resolutionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Do We Need a New Sustainability Assessment Method for the Circular Economy? A Critical Literature Review

Walzberg¹,

Lonca²,

Hanes³

et al. 2021

Front. Sustain.

112

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“…CdTe is the most widely used thin-film technology. It contains significant amounts of cadmium (Cd), an element with relative toxicity, which presents an environmental problem that has been studied worldwide [25,26]. CIGS has a very high optical absorption coefficient because it is a direct band gap material (can be tuned between 1.0 and 2.4 eV by varying the In/Ga and Se/S ratios [27]) and efficiency of approximately 15.7 ± 0.5% for high bandgap [28].…”

Section: B) Thin-film Technologiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

An Overview on Recycling of Photovoltaic Modules at the End of Life (EoL)

Srivastava¹

2022

IJSREM

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Solar energy is clean, renewable, sustainable, and cost-effective, but it also requires time to develop by individual".Due to the current situation of fossil fuels eradication and over-exploitation across the world. The energy demands of the world are to be fulfilled by renewable energy sources. Among these Solar energy has the maximum potential to be exploited to the maximum level to full fill the energy demands of the world. Renewable energies contribute to the environmental, social, and economic development of countries [1]. There are various of clean and renewable energy sources such as Solar, biomass, wind, hydrogen, fuel cell, nanocomposite, and supercapacitor. Each of the energy sources are suitable for specific geographical locations and can suits from region to region [6]. Since ages Sun has been praised as a vitalizer of life. The total Solar energy absorbed by Earth's atmosphere, oceans and land masses is approximately 122 PW•year = 3,850,000 exajoules (EJ) per year. Most of the world's population live in areas with insolation levels of 150-300 watts/m2, or 3.5-7.0 kWh/m2 per day [2 google-Solar Wikipedia]. Solar energy is the most secure and ubiquitous source of energy to meet the power needs after coal exploitation. In present time installation of photovoltaic (PV) Solar modules are growing extremely fast. As result of the increase, the volume of modules that reach the end of their life will grow at the same rate in the near future. Global installed PV capacity reached around 773 GW at the end of 2020 [3] and is expected to rise further to 2840 GW by 2030 and 4500 GW by 2050 [4,. Considering an average module lifetime of 25 years, the worldwide Solar PV waste is anticipated to reach between 4%-14% of total generation capacity by 2030 and rise to over 80% (around 78 million tonnes) by 2050 . Therefore, the disposal of PV modules will become a pertinent environmental issue in the next decades. Eventually, there is plenty of room for progress in this area. This review present core reality of Photovoltaic Life Cycle, Photovoltaic Technology, Photovoltaic Recycling Process as well as global Waste Management Regulation in different countries and the Environmental & Economic Aspects of recycling. At present, PV recycling management in many countries envisages to extend the duties of the manufacturers of PV materials to encompass their eventual disposal or reuse. However, further improvements in the economic viability, practicality, high recovery rate and environmental performance of the PV industry with respect to recycling its products are indispensable. There is potential to develop new pathway for PV waste management industry development and offer employment and prospects for both public and private sector investors.

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“…CdTe is the most widely used thin-film technology. It contains significant amounts of cadmium (Cd), an element with relative toxicity, which presents an environmental problem that has been studied worldwide [37,38]. CIGS has a very high optical absorption coefficient because it is a direct band gap material (can be tuned between 1.0 and 2.4 eV by varying the In/Ga and Se/S ratios [39]) and efficiency of approximately 15.7 AE 0.5% for high bandgap [40].…”

Section: Thin-film Technologiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Review of Recycling Processes for Photovoltaic Modules

Lunardi¹,

Alvarez-Gaitan²,

Bilbao³

et al. 2018

Solar Panels and Photovoltaic Materials

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The installations of photovoltaic (PV) solar modules are growing extremely fast. As a result of the increase, the volume of modules that reach the end of their life will grow at the same rate in the near future. It is expected that by 2050 that figure will increase to 5.5-6 million tons. Consequently, methods for recycling solar modules are being developed worldwide to reduce the environmental impact of PV waste and to recover some of the value from old modules. Current recycling methods can recover just a portion of the materials, so there is plenty of room for progress in this area. Currently, Europe is the only jurisdiction that has a strong and clear regulatory framework to support the PV recycling process. This review presents a summary of possible PV recycling processes for solar modules, including c-Si and thin-film technologies as well as an overview of the global legislation. So far, recycling processes of c-Si modules are unprofitable but are likely to be mandated in more jurisdictions. There is potential to develop new pathways for PV waste management industry development and offer employment and prospects for both public and private sector investors.

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Potential Cd emissions from end-of-life CdTe PV

Cited by 17 publications

References 20 publications

Do We Need a New Sustainability Assessment Method for the Circular Economy? A Critical Literature Review

Do We Need a New Sustainability Assessment Method for the Circular Economy? A Critical Literature Review

An Overview on Recycling of Photovoltaic Modules at the End of Life (EoL)

A Review of Recycling Processes for Photovoltaic Modules

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