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Quantifying Energy Flows in PV Circularity Processes

Conference ·
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As sustainable deployment and end-of-life management become a hot topic to timely address in the PV community, a dynamic comparative evaluation of the benefits of circular pathways such as reuse, and remanufacturing, recycling has not been performed holistically beyond material flows or LCA analysis. Energy flows are critical for evaluating energy generation technologies. Previously they have been used to compare renewables to fossil generation and then between PV technologies. This paper quantifies energy flows to evaluate circular pathways for PV. The energy flows tracking manufacturing, generation, and losses complementary to the mass flows of silicon are quantified leveraging the PV ICE framework.

Research Organization:
National Renewable Energy Lab. (NREL), Golden, CO (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Renewable Power Office. Solar Energy Technologies Office
DOE Contract Number:
AC36-08GO28308
OSTI ID:
1913960
Report Number(s):
NREL/CP-5K00-85059; MainId:85832; UUID:775fb7eb-7ce7-4c60-ac24-f656d392b228; MainAdminID:68506
Resource Relation:
Conference: Presented at the 2022 IEEE 49th Photovoltaics Specialists Conference (PVSC), 5-10 June 2022, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Related Information: 81926
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

References (6)

PV in the circular economy, a dynamic framework analyzing technology evolution and reliability impacts journal January 2022
Circular products and business models and environmental impact reductions: Current knowledge and knowledge gaps journal March 2021
Circularity for circularity's sake? Scoping review of assessment methods for environmental performance in the circular economy. journal April 2021
Raw material needs for the large-scale deployment of photovoltaics – Effects of innovation-driven roadmaps on material constraints until 2050 journal March 2021
Toward a sustainable materials system journal June 2018
Decarbonizing the glass industry: A critical and systematic review of developments, sociotechnical systems and policy options journal March 2022

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Related Subjects

SOLAR ENERGY
circular economy
energy flows
energy return on investment (EROI)
photovoltaics
recycle
remanufacture