First Advisor

Ilke Celik

Term of Graduation

Spring 2025

Date of Publication

7-1-2025

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (M.S.) in Mechanical Engineering

Department

Mechanical and Materials Engineering

Language

English

Subjects

Circular economy, End-of-life management, Life cycle assessment, Perovskite solar cells, Recycling methods, Solvent reuse

Physical Description

1 online resource (vi, 59 pages)

Abstract

Perovskite solar cells (PSCs) are among the most promising next-generation photovoltaic technologies due to their high efficiency and low production costs. Nonetheless, concerns about the toxicity of lead-based absorbers and the lack of standardized recycling protocols present substantial environmental and economic challenges. This thesis provides a comparative life-cycle environmental and economic evaluation of eight state-of-the-art PSC recycling processes. This assessment adheres to ISO 14040/44 standards and combines environmental and cost analyses. Solvent reuse is explicitly modeled for recovery of each functional layer (back contact, absorber, hole-transport, and TCO/glass) to reflect industrial practices. The results show that while most methods reduce environmental impact in specific layers, only those with high solvent reuse rates and minimal reliance on electricity for separation processes achieve consistent reductions in impact across all layers. When solvent usage is optimized for delamination, five of the eight processes reduce total normalized impacts by 35-72% compared with primary extraction, whereas three routes remain marginally higher (≤10%). Economically, pathways reliant on inexpensive reagents and capable of recovering high-value components, such as indium-tin-oxide (ITO) / glass, silver, or Spiro-OMeTAD, exhibit the most attractive revenue-to-cost ratios. One of the processes, belonging to the acidic/Aqueous precipitation group, stands out as the most balanced, with costs below $ 3/m² in a single processing cycle. Overall, the study demonstrates that recycling schemes integrating chemical selectivity, solvent circularity, and multi-layer recovery can transform PSC end-of-life management from an environmental liability into a technically and economically viable circular pathway.

Rights

In Copyright. URI: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s).

Comments

This thesis does not have a page 50.

Financial support provided by National Science Foundation awards (2350521 & 2350522).

Persistent Identifier

https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/43985

Download

Available for download on Wednesday, July 01, 2026

Share

COinS