By Georgie Desailly
Recycling.
As the sunniest city on Australia’s East Coast, Townsville will soon become home to a world-leading solar recycling and material recovery plant, following closely in the footsteps of Central Queensland. The facility will recover raw materials from end-of-life solar panels, that would otherwise go to landfill, and reinvigorate a new market of onshore solar panel manufacturing. The development comes after Victorian-based company, Solar Recovery Corporation (SRC), who provide circular economy solutions for solar panels, partnered with an Italian consortium, who has developed a recycling technology that is said to recover up to 99% of raw materials from end-of-life panels. The model has been successfully proven and utilised in the EU for over a decade, and the first two facilities in Australia were established in Townsville and Biloela in March this year, with both sites now accepting end-of-life panels in preparation for the technology’s arrival in the coming months. Director of Sustainability and Alliances, Rob Gell, says the facilities will aim to process 180,000 panels per annum, with the model intended to support the promotion of improved regional collaboration in areas of employment, procurement and supply chain. “The project offers an opportunity to capture and kickstart the market by receiving all end-of-life solar panels from the North Queensland region and recover
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approximately 3,600 tonnes of valuable resources for Australian industry,” he says. “The recovered materials will be repurposed into a range of manufacturing streams which will provide a circular economy solution for Australia’s growing panel problem, all the while reducing CO2 emissions.” The company is currently working with surrounding regional councils – including the Whitsundays, Charters Towers, Burdekin and Hinchinbrook – to develop collection sites for the panels. Unlike traditional processing methods that often utilise harmful chemicals or pyrolysis (a heat-based method that expels CO2), Rob says their technology uses a combination of mechanical, electrical and vacuum processes to sustainably recover materials such as aluminium, copper, glass and silicon, reducing the need for further mining of such materials in Australia. “With over 90% of every panel comprised of glass, plastics or metal, there are significant opportunities for these recycled materials to fuel growing requirements within the manufacturing industry,” continues Rob. “This includes the demand for quality glass in the manufacturing of glass containers, and solar panel
