The SteamBio project aims at providing an adaptable industrial process that allows the use of assorted agricultural and forestry residues as a flexible feedstock for biochemical and bioenergy use. Confidence in this project delivering to the market is high as it approaches its mid-term stage. This has been reflected by the project exploitation lead, Network New Europe Ltd incorporating Steam Bio Ltd as a new company which will be the primary vehicle for the commercial exploitation of the Steam Bio project results. 

 

The main vision of the  CABRISS project is to develop a circular economy mainly for the photovoltaic, but also for electronic and glass industry. Its aims are the implementation of recycling technologies to recover In, Ag and Si for the sustainable PV technology and to develop a solar cell processing roadmap, which will use Si waste for the high throughput, cost-effective manufacturing of hybrid Si based solar cells and will demonstrate the possibility for the re-usability and recyclability at the end of life of key PV materials.

In the first phase of the project, results have been achieved in respect with the production of Si ingots fully based on the recycled silicon. The Si scrap originating from broken Si based solar cells was purified after extraction of Ag and Al based metallization. Chemical purification is done to remove SiNx based layers, the highly doped phosphorous based emitter and the Al diffused region on the backside of each piece of broken Si cell. Also, perfect multi-crystalline Si ingots have been grown from Si waste originating from wafers that are broken during solar cell processing.

Another route was the extraction of Si pieces using waste from the photovoltaic cell and module industry based on crystalline silicon. Si pieces were demetalized and purified. The first results show that the content of impurities is sufficiently low for using the recycled silicon as raw material for production of PV wafers. Hence, good quality multi-crystalline ingots have been grown, cut into wafers, and currently are being used for the fabrication of solar cells based on the recycled silicon. Additionally, investigations to grow Si ingots from Si powder collected from wafer sawing (Si kerf) are being carried out.