{"id":166076,"date":"2025-08-07T07:37:00","date_gmt":"2025-08-07T05:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/?p=166076"},"modified":"2025-07-30T15:24:32","modified_gmt":"2025-07-30T13:24:32","slug":"scientists-repurpose-old-solar-panels-to-convert-co%e2%82%82-exhaust-into-valuable-chemicals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/scientists-repurpose-old-solar-panels-to-convert-co%e2%82%82-exhaust-into-valuable-chemicals\/","title":{"rendered":"Scientists repurpose old solar panels to convert CO\u2082 exhaust into valuable chemicals"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
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\"CO2\u00a0in
CO2<\/sub> in exhaust gas from a thermal power plant reacts with waste silicon recovered from end-of-life photovoltaic (PV) panels to organic chemicals and porous silica. Credit: Yokohama National University<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Centuries ago, alchemists worked furiously to convert the common metal lead to valuable gold. Today, chemists are repurposing discarded solar panels to create valuable organic compounds from carbon dioxide (CO2<\/sub>), a common greenhouse gas.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Significantly reducing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere to mitigate the most devastating effects of climate change will require a large reduction in emissions as well as strategies designed to sequester emitted CO2<\/sub> and other offending gases. While simply sequestering greenhouse gases would fulfill this goal, creating useful organic chemicals from waste CO2<\/sub> is akin to generating valuable materials from trash.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A team of chemists from Yokohama National University, Electric Power Development Co., Ltd. and the Renewable Energy Research Center at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) recently decided to tackle two waste problems\u2014excess CO2<\/sub> emissions and decommissioned solar panels<\/a>\u2014in the pursuit of creating value-added organic chemicals. The team designed a study to determine if recycled components of discarded solar panels could be used to efficiently convert CO2<\/sub> into useful, carbon-based compounds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The researchers published their study in the July 14 issue of the journal ACS Sustainable Resource Management<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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“In this study, we combined the recycling of waste silicon wafers from end-of-life solar panels with the conversion of CO2<\/sub> in the exhaust gas from a thermal power plant<\/a>. The waste silicon wafer<\/a> acts as a reducing agent of CO2<\/sub> to organic compounds,” said Ken Motokura, professor in the Department of Chemistry and Life Science at YOKOHAMA National University in Yokohama, Japan <\/strong>and first author of the research paper.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n

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\"SEM
SEM images of (A) powdered Si-1, (B) recovered powder after the catalytic reaction with Si-1, (C) powdered Si-2(HCl), (D) recovered powder after the catalytic reaction with Si-2(HCl), and (E) N2<\/sub> adsorption\u2013desorption isotherm\/surface area (S<\/em>BET<\/sub>) of powdered Si-2(HCl) and recovered sample after the catalytic reaction. Credit: ACS Sustainable Resource Management<\/em> (2025). DOI: 10.1021\/acssusresmgt.5c00056<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

The silicon wafers in solar panels can be separated from discarded panels in the panel recycling process. Importantly, the silicon wafers are effective at donating electrons to carbon compounds, including CO2<\/sub>, which can be used to create larger, more valuable chemicals. While the reaction to create value-added organic chemicals from CO2<\/sub> and metallic silicon, which is present in silicon wafers of solar panels, is energetically favorable, few studies have examined the effectiveness of the reaction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The team took crushed and milled silicon wafers from discarded solar panels and added a chemical catalyst to speed the production of organic compounds<\/a> from waste CO2<\/sub>. Initially, the research team had variable success creating formic acid<\/a>, an organic chemical, from the milled silicon wafers. The researchers were able to overcome this limitation by pretreating the milled silicon wafers with hydrochloric acid<\/a> (HCl), which removed aluminum (Al) from the surface of the wafer powder and increased the yield of the reaction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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“We directly converted CO2<\/sub> in the exhaust gas, which contained 14% CO2<\/sub> by volume, from a thermal power plant into formic acid and formamide through a reaction with waste silicon powder, water, and tetrabutylammonium fluoride, a catalyst. No separation and purification of CO2<\/sub> from the exhaust gas is necessary. The contaminated Al in the waste silicon powder decreases the reaction rate, and appropriate pretreatment with HCl enables enhanced reactivity of the waste silicon,” said Motokura<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Ultimately, the reaction produced formic acid at high yields, reaching as high as 73%. Formamide, another value-added organic chemical, was also generated using the silicon powder in the presence of amines, which are organic chemicals containing nitrogen atom. The researchers were also successful in directly connecting their silicon-wafer reactor to the exhaust gas<\/a> port of a thermal power plant, demonstrating the practicality of generating valuable formic acid from waste silicon<\/a> wafers and emitted CO2<\/sub>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) estimates that 60\u201378 MT of global photovoltaic (PV) panels will reach end of life by 2050. The research team hopes that this study will spur additional research into ways that recycled materials, like silicon wafers<\/a>, can be used to sequester and convert waste and greenhouse gases<\/a> into other useful and valuable compounds, turning society’s waste into something more akin to treasure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More information:<\/strong> Ken Motokura et al, Conversion of CO2<\/sub> in Exhaust Gas to Formic Acid and Formamides with Wasted Silicon Recovered from End-of-Life Solar Panels, ACS Sustainable Resource Management<\/em>(2025). DOI: 10.1021\/acssusresmgt.5c00056<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Centuries ago, alchemists worked furiously to convert the common metal lead to valuable gold. Today, chemists are repurposing discarded solar panels to create valuable organic compounds from carbon dioxide (CO2), a common greenhouse gas. Significantly reducing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere to mitigate the most devastating effects of climate change will require a large reduction […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":114,"featured_media":166078,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","nova_meta_subtitle":"A team of chemists from Yokohama National University, Electric Power Development Co., Ltd. and the Renewable Energy Research Center at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) recently decided to tackle two waste problems\u2014excess CO2\u00a0emissions and decommissioned\u00a0solar panels\u2014in the pursuit of creating value-added organic chemicals","footnotes":""},"categories":[5571],"tags":[10744,14120,10416,10408,24005,10743],"supplier":[22595,168,16942],"class_list":["post-166076","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-co2-based","tag-carboncapture","tag-catalysis","tag-circulareconomy","tag-greenchemistry","tag-solarpanels","tag-useco2","supplier-acs-sustainable-chemistry-engineering","supplier-national-institute-of-advanced-industrial-science-and-technology-aist","supplier-yokohama-national-university-ynu"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166076","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/114"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=166076"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166076\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/166078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=166076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=166076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=166076"},{"taxonomy":"supplier","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/supplier?post=166076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}