CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (CBS19 NEWS) — A University of Virginia professor has received a grant from the U.S. Department of Energy for a plan to recycle the silver in solar panels.
A solar panel has about a 25-to-30-year lifespan. Afterward, there is nothing really being done with them.
Each panel has about 20 grams of silver on average. UVA engineering professor Mool Gupta received a $250,000 grant from the DOE to investigate ways to retrieve and recycle that silver.
It’s part of a program from the DOE’s Solar Energy Technologies Office to assist small and innovative projects looking into photovoltaics and solar-thermal technologies.
Silver is a valuable material that can be used in a variety of things, such as newer solar panels and biomedical devices.
The metal is an efficient conductor of both heat and electricity.
Gupta is working on a new method to remove the silver using laser ablation, which will convert the silver electrical contact material into nanoparticles that can be extracted.
Afterward, the silver will not need any further refinement before being used in new silicon modules or it can be purified for use in other fields.