Recovery of Silver from Solar Panel Waste: An Experimental Study

The aim of this study was to develop a recycling process to recover silver metal from solar panel waste. Experimental procedure consisted of mechanical/physical separation, leaching of silver from silicon wafer and precipitation to retrieve silver chloride (AgCl) precipitate. The precipitated AgCl was reduced to silver precipitate form which was subsequently heated up to produce silver metal. The leaching process was first conducted by using 4 M of nitric acid for 24 hrs. The silver-containing leached solution would then be added by sodium chloride solution to precipitate AgCl. The precipitate was filtrated out from the solution and was rinsed with water ready for further step. The rinsed precipitate was dissolved in water, then sucrose and sodium hydroxide were added to achieve precipitated silver. Finally, the precipitated silver was burned with acetylene gas to finally obtain silver metal. Base on the experiment the purity of silver metal of 99.98% can be achieved and by considering recycling of solar panel of 1,000 kg the recycling product of pure silver of 0.23 kg could be acquired.