Restoring the Reactivity of Organic Acid Solution Used for Silver Recovery from Solar Cells by Fractional Distillation

Sustainability

Gi-Hwan Kang¹  Young-Soo Ahn²  Jin-Seok Lee²  Jun-Kyu Lee² 

[1] Photovoltaic Laboratory, Korea Institute of Energy Research, Daejeon 34129, Korea;Separation and Conversion Materials Laboratory, Korea Institute of Energy Research, Daejeon 34129, Korea;

关键词: solar cell;    silver;    methanesulfonic acid;    fractional distillation;   

DOI  :  10.3390/su11133659

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Methanesulfonic acid (MSA) is used to recover silver (Ag) from solar cells by adding an oxidizing agent. It is possible to regenerate by substituting of H⁺ for Ag⁺, and thus it can be reused for additional reactions. However, MSA is highly hygroscopic, and as an oxidizing agent can easily decompose in the acidic environment during Ag extraction, leading to dilution due to the formation of H₂O. This H₂O in the MSA solution hinders the Ag extraction. In this study, we present a fractional distillation process for restoring the reactivity of reused MSA solutions by reducing the H₂O content. Our results showed that the reactivity of the separated MSA was restored and Ag could be recovered from the solar cell.

【 授权许可】

Unknown