Sustainable Demanufacturing Technologies for Photovoltaic Panels

This study is focused on the demanufacturing of Wasted Electric and Electronic Equipment (WEEE), a true ‘treasure’ of precious metals and rare elements. In particular, it will concentrate on one complex sub-class of WEEE, sharing the same multi-layer, multi-material and matrix-structured features: Photovoltaic panels (PVPs). Due to their complex structure, effective and sustainable demanufacturing of these components is far from being achieved. Existing approaches are, in-fact, unsustainable because mainly based on trial-anderror methods that lack of theoretical basis and/or scientific evidences. The paper presents a new proposal for a more sustainable demanufacturing process of PVP, discussing pro’s and con’s.