Japan's university has developed a method to dissolve and neutralize CIGS solar cells, then react them with selenate-reducing microorganisms to finally recover rare metal minerals.
In October 2025, the Joint Research Laboratory for Metal Biotechnology at Shibuya Institute of Technology, along with Professor Hikaru Yamashita from KFC, announced that they successfully purified and recovered the rare metal selenium (Se) from discarded solar panels using selenate-reducing microorganisms.
Selenium is used in semiconductor materials and solar panels. However, selenate and selenite are toxic and need to be purified, as environmental standards have been set for wastewater and soil pollution. Composite solar cells contain harmful substances such as arsenic (As), selenium, and cadmium (Cd). Therefore, when large-scale disposal is expected around 2030, measures must be taken to prevent environmental pollution through recycling. In this study, we dissolved the CIGS (Cu, In, Ga, and Se) system in the composite solar cells, neutralized them, and reacted them with the selenate-reducing microorganism "S. stutzeri NT-I," successfully recovering and recycling selenium.
Original source: www.toutiao.com/article/1847406314233996/
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