Solar panels have been in use for several decades in
the United States, but what happens when they are old enough to be replaced or
upgraded?
Ilke Celik, Ph.D., assistant professor of civil and environmental
engineering at South Dakota Mines, has received
funding from the National Science Foundation to study methods for creating
new types of solar panels that will be more easily recycled in the future.
“There is a really interesting low-cost emerging
technology that we want to investigate,” says Celik. “Perovskite solar
photovoltaic cells have recently attracted worldwide attention, and there is
great potential for them in the future, but we need to be able to recycle
them."
In conventional solar panels, parts like the glass
cover and silicon photovoltaic cells are often fused or glued together, making
them more challenging to separate and affordably recycle. But Celik is proposing
new manufacturing processes for the next-generation solar panels to simplify
and reduce the cost of recycling. “In these new technologies, the perovskite is
more soluble making it easier to reuse and add into future technology,” she
says.
Celik is also working closely with industrial
partners and other university researchers around the country along with the US
Department of Energy on ongoing projects. She notes that recent congressional
legislation in support of clean energy coupled with the increased efficiency of
new solar panels and the lower cost of solar energy production will boost this
technology in the future.
Celik’s
research is funded for the next two years and includes both undergraduate and
graduate students who will take part in the research. “This
project is particularly gratifying because of the potential impacts it could
have on the energy and recycling sector,” says Tanner O’Hara, a graduate student in materials science and engineering at
Mines. “I am passionate
about this work because of the interesting new materials and challenges it has
brought.”
The end goal of the research is to reduce the carbon
footprint of solar cells while increasing their efficiency and overall
affordability. “We know solar is already more sustainable and cost-effective
than conventional energy generation, and what we are trying to do is increase
its efficiency and reduce the production costs even further,” says Celik. “We
want to optimize this technology to make it even more sustainable in the future.”
Celik says that traditional coal fire power plants
produce about one kilowatt of electricity per 1000 grams of CO2
emissions. She says conventional solar technologies produce about 30-40 grams
of CO2 for every kilowatt produced. “What we are trying to do is
bring the carbon footprint of solar down to less than one gram of carbon per
kilowatt,” she says.
South Dakota’s former slogan is “The Sunshine State,”
and Celik says there is a great potential for local economic development around
any new solar technology invented at Mines. “When the temperature increases
solar efficiency goes down, because hot solar cells don’t produce as much
energy as those that are cool. Solar panels like colder weather with lots of
sun, making South Dakota the perfect place for this technology to flourish,” she
says.