# help on how to recover silver from solar panel cell



## tomiyet (Oct 13, 2012)

Hi all, I'm looking at how silver content on photovoltaic cell opf solar system can be recover. I read about it when a friend gave me a hint on the usage of huge silver on the cell. Any useful info will be appreciated. Thanks


----------



## NobleMetalWorks (Oct 13, 2012)

It depends on the type of solar cell you are talking about...

If you have silver on the solar cells then the composition should go something like this. Silver on the front of the panel, then the silicon material, then Al on the back. That is the problem, the Al. So if you crush the material up into a fine powder, you are still dealing with a large amount of Al. And now you are dealing with the silicate material.

Solar Cells can be a pain in the you know what.

The first thing I would do is try to find out what the composition of the material is. It's best to know exactly what you are dealing with before you attempt to process. And unfortunately, there are many different ways to manufacture solar cells, and they have been doing so since the 80s.

So in other words, it's not straight forward and you really need to figure out the composition before you try to recover and silver. There is no one way to process this type of material, and no one way, but many, to manufacture. Many solar cells don't even use silver.

Scott


----------



## johnny309 (Oct 14, 2012)

The Al con be dissolve by NaOH...resulting solution after filtration is (well...can be used as a primary source of Al..) a primary source of aluminum(can be recovered)....and the slag,after washing,and calcination,then can be treated with nitric to recover silver.
Between this 2 processes the Si(silicium,which is amorf)...will remain behind.
P.S.:do not crush them....the waffers made of polycristaline silicium can be sell back to industry.


----------

