TIE wins gold award at the 2021 MOE Innergy Awards

The team from SP's Department for Technology, Innovation and Enterprise (left to right): Thong Ya Xuan, Li Xiaodong, Yin Xi Jiang, Lu Yan Ru

Majority of the end-of-life or defective photovoltaic (PV) modules end up in landfills, posing potential danger to the environment due to the leaching of toxic heavy metals, such as lead and silver, into ground water. Moreover, while there have been reports of PV modules being recycled, these methods are often inappropriate and inefficient.

SP's department for Technology, Innovation and Enterprise successfully developed a patented technology for recovering all the valuable materials in high yield and purity from crystalline silicon PV modules with green chemistry. By not crushing the PV panels, the glass can be recovered as a whole, while the silicon substrate can be recovered piece-wise; as opposed to both of them being in powdered form, and as a mixture. In addition, all the valuable substances from the PV modules are recovered as high value products and the proprietary etchants are milder in nature, and could be reused for several batches of extraction.

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