THE JOURNAL OF KMUTNB

Volume 32, No. 04, Month OCTOBER, Year 2022, Pages 978 - 988

Assessment and approach to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from end of life solar panel waste for thailand

Putthadee Ubolsook, Chatkaew Chailuecha, Surat Sedpho

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Solar panel waste management is an important step for the utilization of solar technology. This research evaluated the greenhouse gas emissions based on the life cycle assessment. The transportation, waste sorting and recycling to recover materials from solar panels have been considered. Greenhouse gas assessment for disposal of used solar panels in Japan is called the conventional disposal (Conv.) because it is commonly used in the moment. The result showed that the total greenhouse gases released from the conventional disposal was 8.6370 kgCO2eq/module which can be divided into two factors, 2.1295 kgCO2eq/module for the transportation and 6.5075 kgCO2eq/module for the recycling process. To expand the approach of waste management, therefore, the researcher increased more four scenarios which were: Sc1: reduction of the transport weight by separating the elements of the solar panels before shipping to Japan, Sc2: disposal of solar wastes in Thailand by the local recycling plant, Sc3: solar panel disassembly before delivering to a recycling facility in Thailand, and Sc4: disassembling and disposing the components in Thailand by the recycling plant that used renewable energy for electricity generation. The greenhouse gas evaluation of four scenarios were 6.3826 kgCO2eq/module, 8.7892 kgCO2eq/module, 6.0445 kgCO2eq/module and 4.5811 kgCO2eq/module, respectively. It was found that Sc4 could reduce greenhouse gas emissions from Conv. by 46.96%. To develop the effective planning for solar panel waste management in Thailand, the analysis of various recycling techniques should be conducted in further research.

Keywords

Solar Cell; Disposal; Greenhouse Gas Emission; End of Life; Scenario

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