Electrochemical Recycling of Photovoltaic Modules to Recover Metals and Silicon Wafers

Abstract An electrochemical‐assisted leaching process using boron‐doped diamond (BDD) electrodes was developed to recover valuable metals from photovoltaic modules. With BDD electrodes peroxydisulfate is generated from sulfuric acid to oxidatively dissolve copper, tin and silver from solar cell contacts. Since the oxidant is regenerated in the developed process, no additional hazardous and volatile chemicals are required, and the process can be operated solely by electricity. In addition, the dissolved metals can be electrochemically recovered at the cathode of the same cell.