2024-01-06 06:00:00
REPORTAGE – This factory located in Saint-Loubès (Gironde) is the first in the world to use a machine to delaminate photovoltaic panels, thus facilitating the recovery of glass and aluminum, but also of strategic metals such as silver and copper. .
Le Figaro Bordeaux
The scientific consensus is unanimous: we must develop renewable energies at full speed to face climate change. A political will is therefore gradually emerging: in 2022, in Belfort, the President of the Republic announced his desire to multiply France’s solar energy production capacities tenfold by 2050, to exceed the 100 gigawatts. But behind the craze for photovoltaic panels, there is the question of their recycling. A booming industry in Gironde.
About 20 kilometers from Bordeaux, along the departmental road on the edge of Saint-Loubès, there are numerous large warehouses and factories. Under the clear, pink sky of this Gironde winter morning, there is one that might almost go unnoticed. However, it is a unique factory of its kind, a pioneer in Europe. For its employees, work began at 6 a.m., well before sunrise, in the middle of several hundred pallets, all covered with dozens of photovoltaic panels waiting in the open air to begin a new life.
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A goal of 10 to 15% reuse
Inaugurated at the end of September 2022 by Envie 2E Aquitaine and Soren (the eco-organization approved in France for the collection and processing of used photovoltaic panels), this factory aims to sort, recycle and reuse solar panels used. For an investment of around two million euros, this industrial site has the capacity to process up to 4,000 tonnes of solar panels each year. In 2023, more than 1,000 tonnes will pass through Saint-Loubès, or around 50,000 panels. A figure to put into perspective with the 180,000 tonnes of panels installed per year in France, for an average lifespan ranging from 15 to 25 years.
Among those arriving in Saint-Loubès, around 4% are reusable. If the panel appears to be in good condition, it is examined through several machines. “There are several tests to pass before they can be resold as reuse panels», specifies Pierre Tauzin, the site manager. Like the one examined step by step this Thursday by one of the employees and still operating at 98% of its maximum capacity, many panels are still in very good condition despite more than ten years of life, and can therefore be resold second-hand. The objective of this Gironde factory is to ultimately reuse between 10 and 15% of the treated photovoltaic panels.
Photovoltaic energy in New Aquitaine
With 4,700 GWh produced in 2022, Nouvelle-Aquitaine is the French region which produces the most photovoltaic electricity. The most powerful solar power plant in France – and the largest in Europe when it was inaugurated in 2015 – is located in Cestas, in Gironde. It is also in Bordeaux that the largest urban solar power plant in Europe is installed, with 140,000 photovoltaic panels installed on the site of a former landfill, producing the equivalent of the annual electricity consumption of 34,545 people.
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300,000 tonnes of waste by 2030
Among those that cannot be reused, they are either deframed then crushed when they are in too poor condition (because of hail, lightning or poor removal and transport conditions), or recycled. This is when the delamination machine comes in, “a unique machine in the world» of Japanese design, explains Pierre Tauzin, whose Saint-Loubès site is the only one to be equipped today. Using blades heated to around 350°C, the delamination machine scrapes the plastic layers of the panel and allows in fine to separate the laminate from the glass plate. It then becomes possible to extract strategic components such as copper and silver.
According to Nicolas Defrenne, the director of Soren, the quantity of this waste to be treated should increase from 3,800 tonnes in 2022 to “300,000 tonnes from 2030» with, ultimately, around ten reprocessing centers compared to only three currently. For Nicolas Defrenne, the interest of the process of this factory “showcase» Girondine is the possibility of recovering «with great purity” some “critical metals” has “high added value“. The strips obtained are then sent near Grenoble, where the company Rosi Solar separates the metals from the plastic to recover them, using a soft chemistry process. Silver, for example, represents only 0.08% of the structure of a solar panel but 19.47% of its value, recalls Pierre Tauzin.
The factory currently employs ten people but is actively looking for new recruits. “Two sets of ten people would allow us to double production», explains the site manager. Like all the group’s structures, Envie 2E Aquitaine is also an integration company. Employees sign a two-year contract and “the aim of the game is that they can return, at the end of the two years or before, to a more traditional job“. If the factory is looking to recruit, it is because the solar panel project has a bright future ahead of it. “Sales of new solar panels are exploding, expected to increase tenfold by 2030», augurs Pierre Tauzin. As the panels being installed throughout the country age, the question of their recycling will arise more and more.
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