Recycling

Renewable hardware that lasts longer and uses fewer materials could bolster recycling efforts and help to build an effective circular economy for solar and battery technologies, says the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).

Vikrant Singh, co-founder and CTO of BatX Energies, told pv magazine that the company would use the funds to scale up its capacity, with plans to launch material production from end-of-life lithium batteries on a commercial scale. It will also set up recycling units in different geographies to locally produce black mass – a mixture of battery anode and cathode materials – and ship it to its India facility for battery material extraction.

Hinduja Group, an Indian multinational, has invested GBP 15 million (($18.4 million) with four other investors in Connected Energy, a developer of energy storage systems based on second-life electric vehicle batteries. The investment will help Connected Energy to scale up its operations and move into utility-scale project development. 

Battery startup Nunam is working with German carmaker Audi AG and the Audi Environmental Foundation to roll out electric rickshaws powered by used Audi e-tron used batteries. It expects to launch the e-rickshaws in India at some point early next year.

Researchers in Singapore have developed a new technique in which polycrystalline silicon is pulverized into powder and pelletized into ingots. The process relies on spark plasma sintering to dope the silicon with germanium and phosphorus.

Nitin Gupta, chief executive officer and co-founder, Attero Recycling, speaks to pv magazine about the supply chain concerns for lithium battery storage manufacturing in India, current battery recycling scenario and Attero’s capacity.

Under their clean energy partnership, both countries also agreed to cooperate in the disposal, recycling, and reclamation of valuable materials from batteries, solar panels, turbine blades, and electronics.

Bangladesh currently does not have a recycling center for PV module recycling. But according to a group of local scientists, the country could evolve into a regional hub for PV waste recycling if proper guidelines are implemented.

French start-up Rosi Solar has developed an industrial solution claimed to be capable of recovering high purity silicon, silver and copper contained in end-of-life PV modules. The company’s technology is based on a pyrolysis process that makes it possible to isolate the different metals from the cells.

Researchers at Stanford University and the US Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have explored the potential recovery of lost capacity in lithium batteries by using an extremely fast discharging step to reconnect an island of inactive lithium with the anode. Adding this extra step slowed the degradation of their test battery and increased its lifespan by nearly 30%.