Solar Panel and Lithium-ion Battery Recycling
UK-IDEA has been exploring novel thermal-electrochemical processes to extract high-value materials from end-of-life solar panels and lithium-ion batteries while managing regulated species to protect our water and soil. These processes feature reduction of acid use or no acid use, decrease in treatment time, and improvement of the metal recovery rate in comparison of the traditional hydrometallurgical methods. High purity of the recovered materials can be reused in production of batteries and solar panels, potentially enabling the demonstration of a closed loop economy while distressing the surge of using renewable materials during the decarbonization era.
Research Partnership with the PPL Corporation