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https://reneweconomy.com.au/australian-university-to-lead-international-solar-panel-recycling-project-focusing-on-high-purity-silicon/>
"Victoria’s Swinburne University of Technology will lead a $3 million
international solar panel recycling project focused on extracting and reusing
precious and critical minerals.
Backed by grant funding from the Australian government, the new Silicon Zero
Emission Recycling, Refining and Production program, is investigating new
methods of removing impurities and salvaging precious and critical minerals
from end-of-life solar panels, with a particular focus on silicon.
“The Si-Zero Research Program is the first of its kind in the world,” said Dr
Bintang Nuraeni, a Swinburne researcher involved in the program.
“It brings together international expertise to develop zero-carbon processes
for recovering high-purity silicon and other valuable materials from
end-of-life solar panels, strengthening the foundation for a sustainable and
circular solar industry.”
The project will be spearheaded by Swinburne’s Professor Akbar Rhamdhani, who
says very high-grade silicon is needed to produce more solar panels, and other
technologies.
“In a traditional process, we use carbon and extremely high temperatures to
reduce raw silica to metallurgical-grade silicon. It’s very energy intensive
and takes a lot of time.
“Recycling can bypass this.”
But even recycling has its challenges, often requiring a lot of time and
energy, while the silicon extracted from solar panels must also be refined to
extreme purity – up to 99.99999 per cent.
That is why Professor Rhamdhani and his team are developing a process where
much of the work is done in bulk by robots and processing is powered by green
energy and electricity.
“We are developing a process that is quite clean, with a no or very low carbon
footprint,” he said."
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*** Xanni ***
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mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
