Recycling of the solar panels that are consolidated using glass fibre polymers

In the present times, the need for light weight and high strength materials has increased and this need is catered using glass fibre polymers. Another area which seeks for weight reduction is encapsulating solar energy; this is done by photovoltaic panels which are sandwiched by an aluminium frame along with supporting layers of glass and junction box, collectively called as a solar panel. To reduce the weight of the solar panels, glass fibres are used in different areas to consolidate the whole structure. The operational period of solar panels in encapsulating energy is 25–30 years, but the components of panels, like glass fibre polymers, have their intrinsic properties retained for almost 60 years. This gives us an opportunity to recycle the solar panel components. In this study, the different components of the solar panel are separated through chemical leaching and fabricated as a composite through stir casting method. The fabricated samples were tested for Vickers micro hardness, which shows that the sample with 2 wt% reinforcement had the lowest mean hardness of 56.01, while the sample with 4 wt% reinforcement showed the highest mean hardness of 65.84. This is due to variation in reinforcement dispersion, which was found using scanning electron microscopy images.