Numerical Modelling of Delamination of Crystalline Photovoltaic Modules to Enable Efficient Recycling

Photovoltaic (PV) technologies have emerged as a cornerstone in the global transition towards renewable energy, with an increasing rate of production and deployment across industrial and domestic sectors. However, the rapid expansion of installed capacity, coupled with the increasing number of PV modules approaching end-of-life, poses a major challenge: the sustainable management of electronic waste, since the inherent difficulty in separating the constituent materials often leads to the disposal of panels in landfills. Thus, demanufacturing processes must prioritise reduced energy consumption, minimal pollutant emissions, and efficient materials recovery. This study proposes cryogenic delamination as an innovative demanufacturing strategy for the recovery of strategic materials (silicon, aluminium) together with valuable metals (silver, copper). Thus, a finite element model has been developed, with the purpose of optimising the process and assessing its scalability for continuous industrial application, thereby enabling the evaluation of different operational conditions without costly or time-intensive experimentation.