Solar Panels Made From Recycled Materials

Where the hell would recyclable solar panel materials come from.

Solar panels made from recycled materials.

Things have changed thanks to ingenious but very simple solar panels made from recycled plastic bottles. The rest of the solar panels is made up of old windows bits of plywood and a couple of random bits and bobs from the diy shop. If you are diy minded and curious about solar panel materials it may even be a question of wanting a hypothetical ingredients list to produce one. The materials can be retrieved and can then even be used in the manufacture of new photovoltaic panels.

Typically the solar cells are manufactured in china and shipped to europe but they are fragile so a substantial proportion of them get damaged in transit. Materials such as glass silver indium selenide gallium copper aluminum cadmium silicon dioxide and aluminum dioxide can be retrieved and reused. Conventional silicon based technologies like monocrystalline or polycrystalline modules can be treated similarly but thin film solar panels based on components like cadmium telluride cdte or copper indium gallium selenide cigs must be treated separately as their composition is much more complex and can even be toxic. From old solar panels a high amount of materials can be retrieved.

An hungarian company called platio developed pavement tiles with solar panels integrated into them made from recycled plastic. The damaged cells can then be bought by the kilogram as pricey scrap. The materials used to manufacture the cells for solar panels are only one part of the solar panel itself. The system consists of monocrystalline silicon cells inside tempered glass which is backed by recycled plastic to protect the panels from environmental forces and the pressure of people walking on them.