they submit political tensions in the us where citizens remain divided over israel's conduct of the war. you're watching dw news from berlin up next is planet a. terry market. thanks for watching the of how to kick in the south china sea. why ships are here? what this is supposed to mean the hoss of the global conflict of to decades of chinese extension is in the nation is resisting with this in the course of a powerful incentive on september. first, we might have a teen tiny problem with solar. and this was

a zone for use. energy is not what start to deliver in clean energy in the 19 fifties and took off in the late 2000 is all ready for the down. we don't because the technology is trash, but because solar panels are built the last 22. so soon we could be looking at $27000000.00 tons of out of state solar waste and only a tiny fraction gets recycled around 80 percent of old panels. landfills. big from one plastics end up in the environments to precious metals wouldn't just go to waste and 3 recycling save emissions. so i'm hand the front jobs to find a fix. and this has to do with baking and bathing. now we have the french company, rosie found it in 2017. they are one of the pioneers. and so the recycling this is

antoine. hello. he has been working here for the past 4 years. so what the main pro is the steps in your recycling process. so the 1st step is to get suite of cleaners. so we do it with a demo treatments. it's up to release is processing is so nice that any municipality moves and then we separate them until we make any consultation. and then you have the last step because that's sort of what they said something different metals. and these methods we want to separate them from the chosen. so we have the chemical treatment, small light, chemical treatment that we do that this i choose the city calling from the, to the and this way at the end with the sales inside the event is basically a solar panel is made of a few main ingredients that need to be separated during the recycling process. you've got tempered glass stumble, plastic blue, the cells with silicon silver and copper, a plastic backseat and an aluminum frame that holds everything together. of course,

the pre size mix of components varies by manufacturer. why is it so hard to recycle these panels? so the good thing we fill up and then said them made to last very long 20. so to use outside anyways, a condition they can last because of the cost function. this construction with this phone, glass seating, the problem is pulling, they're screwing everything together. it's very, what's are resistance. the problem is now we need to recycle them and we need to separate all these materials to put them back in the economy. and the old music is always pulling there. so the most settings, the 1st step is to separate the materials from the putting those. this is not a possibility to crush sheets because if you crush you to create small plastic goods, all glued together with these pulling or gloves and the plastic is literally everywhere . so even when you now remove this, you still can't access the cells, right?

exactly. you have different types of floating, there's even more years. there's even more a lot. wow, this is difficult sir. yeah. so the 1st step is to get rid of the plastics. the panel, let's get put into this big grey furnace. and because rosie is still in the pets and same process, everything today is pretty much top secret. the mazda mind behind this process is b, c, c, u, c, t, o, and co founder of rows. the penalty bake form between one and a half and 6 hours, turning the plastics inside into gas. what is really important when you look at this process because it depends on the temperature, how the panels of the 2nd one makes the difference. what's next to the funds and what these our, our loaners are now. well, section i,

people section these of course is not just signed off. i would, i have the full size. it's customized optimized for the treat. most of you start off on it. so we think that's we, uh, once we, uh we, we manage to do is to improve the general regulation of the oven, depending on the, on the of the sol smart that your i've so the, the most use that contribute to the process is not, i know but we have paid old, it's a combination of the 2, it's covered. really we use the energy from the load your to piece of the old on. so we can save energy please. the combination of the competing between the machines equipment deals on the field with the combination of the to make small or mexico efficient, rosie sans has it is gases and exhaust to through a 5 stage filtering system. they say only c o 2 and water vapor are released in the end. but despite the c o 2, recycling steel saves the missions compared to mining fresh silicon. creating the

base silicon from quartz, coal and which ships release us between $8.00 to $12.00 tons of c o 2 pets, one of civic 10, rosie says very cycling process only produces 3 times a reduction of at least 5 tons of c o 2 puts on of silicon, the company wouldn't let us show you the solar panels going into the furnace. but this is what the solar pennants look like off the beam baked in the oven. this batch is about 20 kilos and represents the contents of one solar panels. you can see the glass, you can see the silicon waivers which are like super thin. yeah. and you can just move. yeah. and then you've got the fun. now this mass goes into the next range of machines that take on the salting job. when you look at a typical solar panel from the weight perspective, it's about 76 percent last 10 percent plus the 8 percent aluminum,

5 percent silicon, one percent copper and 0 point one percent suv or. and it's that really valuable silva, that's the main goal of this whole process. the 1st, we need to extract the copper and glass. but this whole process is the only way to recycle solar panels. other companies are trying it with mechanical recycling, for example, is less energy intensive. it costs less and you don't need to deal with tenix afterwards. however, the recovery rates can be low thumbs like solar materials and gemini, i using hate like rosie at the start of that process. but no chemical boss and japan does either one wholesale parts of place, method and likes the name suggests is really tough and top nice is used to separate the glass from the rest. another german company is putting it very, very simply hitting the solar panels with lightning. this bus them into several

components which are then salted, but i don't think i can pick a key a favorite right now. models in pits us has been researching photo of a, takes the load in 20 years and this concerns about how to deal with all the plastics in solar panels. i'm not exactly happy, for example, with a stomach process in which the polymers are considered. right. if i, because we would use those polymers to go into a space for which the, the elements are still there. now that being said, it is very hard currency to take upon them, or that's inside the solar panel. get it out of the solar panel and, and tweak it in the way that we can reuse it as a polymer. it's very energy intensive to do that. and it doesn't really compete both energetically or economically or ecologically with making a new column. so plastics are going to stay a pain to deal with. but what about the remaining materials off to the mechanical soul? taishan? now most of them is here is

a separated book. we still need to get out the most valuable one that is still in this photo of, of how excels connected to the silicon. it's the silver, the thousands of pieces of photo takes sales and these containers go through a set of $5.00 to $8.00 kemi co wet boss that are connected to each other. here the silicon episode of us separated from one another. it is these tiny, tiny silver lines that we're talking about here. then jump into solar panel is to make the electricity available for an entire year's oil storage in a battery. for example, in case you wondering, this is as much of the process as we could show you the can you specify a bit what kind of a chemical to use? because chemistry is like a really wide so we avoid the use of organic solvents and strand assets. and we have specific condition was different, best to treat, to different to will take. so that's as specific as they would get because we can't

really show you the inside of the process. we set up a small experiment. so you 1st have a photo of a takes out as they enter. and every step you can see the so the thing is detached the to more it's like really tiny small fingers. yes, it is very, very soon. and elizabeth like hair. yes. once the purity on the silver and on the silicon. 3 comes out of this. so our process is in general, unable to keep this impurity for the material when they come in. so we do degrade the purity. and so for example, for the silver, it comes from silver paste on the on the self and silver paste or in general above 90 percent true. it's for the sooty cool. it's a 99.9 to 9 percent. oh okay. that sounds quite sure.

the recovered purity is in line with scientifically published papers, but for the economics of the process, another number is important. how much of the materials is actually covered with that combination of thermal and chemical recycling steps, rosie says they are able to recover a 99 percent of the glass aluminum and copper 90 percent of the silicon and 95 percent of the silver. which means that they get about 10 us dollars worth of silver out of each solar panel. the other stuff, glass aluminum copper and silicon is with another 10 bucks. but of course, the recovered materials costs more then verbs and materials. do you have the feeling that companies are willing to pay these premiums that you have for recycled material? yeah, unfortunately, the don't say big premium. but today, all the big companies, all the induced companies in europe has very strong targets on c o. 2 reduction.

and using recycling that they owe these a very good way for them to reduce their c o 2 emission from their rule materials. so already we city coding, for instance, the suits we missions of city can function is very high. so far with custom, there is crucial that they use let's see what we intend to use. my tails and our city con, 5014, these targets. i would have loved to compare the price is we covered materials to actual market prices, but rosie wouldn't tell me the numbers. luckily for them and fonts that is a so called gauge fee that every solar and pull to also must pay to recycling companies to make sure the panels arrived fully taken care of at their end of life . just to put this in perspective, a study by the us national renewable energy lab put the cost of trashing edge solar panel at under $5.00. whereas recycling one would cost $15.00 to $45.00. so how do you make recycling pay? rosie?

say they can process around $3000.00 tons of solar panels per year here. not really that much compared to the millions of tons of trash expected in the upcoming years . and it's not even enough for them to break even. but they're already planning to build a facility 10 times bigger in germany by the end of 2025, which should be able to handle $30000.00 tons per year. however, up scaling, such a process is a real challenge as the so you told me what the very big scale recycling sites will have to organize it very well. the operate test engineers, technicians to or the chase ability system. and also how to integrate the operate test. so human beings with the automation to reduce the cost to protect your maximum, the safety of the, of the sites. also,

you cannot use this recycled silicon straight way to form and repeating module. one of the reasons being the technology moved on 2030 years ago, silicon of 99.999 percent purity was use. sounds pretty pure. however, today silicon more than a 1000 times pura is required. so you need another purification process off to this to create new silicon ingots and new wafers to put in to new modules. this has been done on the science sides. for example, by germany's count who are for institute research buddy that works closely with industry pods. but rosie is taking a different route and it's selling it's recovered materials to the automotive building and electronics industries. if it is, or the video like it calling on, et cetera, and don't forget so. so starts our title. we've posted the videos on the environment every friday

the the function you have the perfect the sub plays on of to obtain a 10. 2 given that officer has access to an absence of the nash 3, there's some type of conflict this one often does you mean not by someone else is going to get the . ready when i, when i'm on stage one of the.