According to Reuters, the first solar panel recycling plant in Europe was built not long ago. This year, the plant will recycle 1,300 tons of solar panels. In the future, the plant will also set up more similar recycling plants around the world. .
Compared with the hot links of PV production, installation, operation and maintenance, the recycling process has been rarely noticed. Especially in China, because the industry has a common understanding: The recycling cycle of China's PV has not yet arrived.
According to recognized technical standards, PV modules have a life cycle of about 25 years. If the components of the first batch of Golden Sun Projects were put on the ground in 2010, this year, the components have just entered the 8th year of operation, and the distance is still available. day.
However, one phenomenon that deserves attention is that many people in the industry predict the PV recycling situation, and the peak period of component recycling will be 10 years ahead of schedule. It is not in the normal law in 2035, but it may enter the intensive phase at the beginning of 2025. , around 2030 will usher in the peak of processing.
According to the prediction of the Institute of Electrical Engineering of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, if the operation and maintenance of the components is good, the cumulative waste of domestic PV modules will reach nearly 60 GW by 2034; and if the operation and maintenance is normal, the accumulated waste will exceed 70 GW and 70 GW. It has exceeded 1/2 of the cumulative installed capacity of photovoltaics in 2017. According to the analysis of the US Energy Information Administration, by 2050, 2/3 of China's PV modules will need to be retired in advance.
Since the industry cycle is likely to come early, recycling preparation needs to be followed up early.
After decommissioning, traditional PV modules generally go through five processing steps: The first step is to disassemble the components and transport them to the processing mechanism; the second step is to disassemble and remove the backplane and wires; the third step is to break the components. Remove the outermost tempered glass; the fourth step is pyrolysis. The main purpose of this step is to dissolve the EVA; the final step is extraction, which takes out the most valuable metal and silicon in the assembly.
These five links seem easy, but to complete successfully, there is still a need for companies to dare to try ahead and find out the technical routes that can be promoted. For an emerging industry, new technologies and big markets are like chickens. The relationship with the egg: If there is no technology, the market foundation is no good and meaningless, and if the market size is not big enough, the quality of the technology is difficult to test. However, any new technology, inevitably experience is polished, replaced, improved, but There must be an initial technology to come out first, in order to lay the foundation for more technology.
Just as the current PV module recycling, although the industry cycle is not yet, the market size is still small, but the technical reserve still needs to start from the present. In the next 10 to 15 years, we should continue to try to let the relevant technology compete and develop the survival of the fittest. Only so When the components are retired on a large scale, the mature technical route can really come in handy.
In an intuitive impression, after a PV module is retired, the most difficult part is definitely the last one, that is, the recycling process after entering the factory, because this part has the highest technical requirements. But in China, in addition to the processing link, the transportation link is actually full. challenge.
After 2010, the domestic PV industry has experienced two rapid growth:
The first time it appeared in 2012~2013, in order to cope with the 'double anti-' in Europe and the United States, many ministries and commissions jointly issued a number of policies to support the photovoltaic industry. After more than a year, the installed capacity of photovoltaics increased nearly 10 times, and more than 90% Ground power station.
The second appearance of 2016~2017, due to the decline in component prices, the increase in support, the rapid development of domestic distributed PV, the annual installed capacity increased by 3.7 times.
Concentrating on the horse means retiring. For the large-scale installation of distributed photovoltaics from 2016 to 2017, the product conversion rate is high, the quality is good, and you can refer to the rich distributed PV recycling experience in Europe, Japan, etc. Even if it brings some problems, the impact may be smaller.
This batch is not the case in 2012~2013. Due to the early introduction of PV modules and relatively weak technical level, and mainly used in western power stations, it is difficult to find similar recycling precedents on a global scale. More importantly, this batch The components will be retired first, so it is urgent to explore the Chinese-style recycling model.
Some people have proposed a way of thinking, that is, the photovoltaic enterprises themselves, but this 'who is the child who took away' model is not optimistic, for two reasons:
First, from the perspective of return, enterprise processing is very uneconomical. After recycling a PV module, the biggest value is reflected in the metal part, but the metal that can be recycled is very limited, and the recycling investment is large. If the input and output do not match Enterprises cannot generate too much power;
Second, from the conditional point of view, component processing requires equipment and additional manpower. Even if the company has sufficient production capacity and technical reserves, the domestic PV module production line is mainly concentrated in the central and eastern regions, rarely located in the west. Not only do companies need to re-purchase production lines, but they also have to pay a lot of logistics fees, which will inevitably reduce the enthusiasm of PV companies to participate in post-processing. Since decentralized processing, long-distance transportation is difficult to achieve, the relatively feasible approach should be centralized processing and proximity. .
Taking Gansu Province as an example, decommissioned PV modules can be collected by professional organizations and transported to one or several processing points according to the type of product and the degree of damage. According to different characteristics, different methods can be used for centralized processing. The PVCYCLE model participates in post-processing in the form of capital contribution, allowing 'professionals to do professional things', or will produce better results, and greater benefits.
