Cryogenic delamination and sustainability: analysis of an innovative recycling process for photovoltaic crystalline modules

The increasing rate of production and diffusion of photovoltaic (PV) technologies for industrial and domestic applications urges improvement of the sustainability of their demanufacturing processes in order to reduce the amount of electronic wastes. Sustainability of demanufacturing processes concerns the reduction of energy consumption, the reduction of polluting substances as well as the reduction of the effort spent in recovery of the components. There is not an optimal process so far, provided a number of different approaches have been devised (see e.g. [1–3]). A promising choice relies on the use of thermo-mechanical treatments for inducing a delamination process where interfacial bonding between layers are weakened and, finally, broken inducing separation of the layers [4]. In this paper we present a preliminary industrialization study, based on Finite Element (FE) Analysis, to prove the validity of the new sustainable demanufacturing process endeavouring the delamination process. The analysis is performed searching the optimal thermally induced cycles at cryogenic temperatures. We finally show that it is possible to induce the delamination according to specific operating temperatures.