Life Cycle Assessment of Coated-Glass Recovery from Perovskite Solar Cells

Abstract

Perovskite solar cells (PSCs) are emerging photovoltaic devices with great potential to become a terawatt-scale technology. To develop sustainable end-of-life strategies for PSCs, we performed a life cycle assessment on 13 PSC recycling techniques, focusing on the recovery of coated glass. We found that the ecotoxicity due to the consumption of materials is the major contributor to the environmental impact. All but one of the techniques generated more environmental impacts than the production of virgin coated glass. We also found that material reuse and recovery are the key to sustainable coated glass recycling. We can decrease the impact of these techniques between 56 and 68% by recovering the solvent, and further reductions are possible reusing solvents. Techniques with a thermal or a physical process would need to lower their electricity and material use in addition to solvent reuse and recovery to become an environmentally sustainable reality.