Review of State of the Art Recycling Methods in the Context of Dye Sensitized Solar Cells

Fabian Schoden, Marius Dotter, Dörthe Knefelkamp, Tomasz Blachowicz and Eva Schwenzfeier Hellkamp
Additional contact information
Fabian Schoden: Institute for Technical Energy Systems (ITES), Bielefeld University of Applied Sciences, 33619 Bielefeld, Germany
Marius Dotter: Institute for Technical Energy Systems (ITES), Bielefeld University of Applied Sciences, 33619 Bielefeld, Germany
Dörthe Knefelkamp: Institute for Technical Energy Systems (ITES), Bielefeld University of Applied Sciences, 33619 Bielefeld, Germany
Tomasz Blachowicz: Institute of Physics—Center for Science and Education, Silesian University of Technology, 44-100 Gliwice, Poland
Eva Schwenzfeier Hellkamp: Institute for Technical Energy Systems (ITES), Bielefeld University of Applied Sciences, 33619 Bielefeld, Germany

Energies, 2021, vol. 14, issue 13, 1-12

Abstract: In times of climate change and dwindling fossil resources, the need for sustainable renewable energy technologies gains importance, increasingly fast. However, the state of the art technologies are energy intensive in their production, like monocrystalline photovoltaic, or even consist of not recyclable composite material, in the case of wind turbine blades. Despite a lack in efficiency and stability, dye sensitized solar cells (DSSC) have a high potential to supplement the state of the art green energy technology in future. With low production costs and no necessity for toxic compounds DSSCs are a potential product, which could circulate in the loops of a circular economy. Therefore, with this paper, we provide the status of research on DSSC recycling and an outlook on how recycling streams could be realized in the future for glass-based DSSCs without toxic components. The overview includes work on using recycled material to build DSSCs and extending the life of a DSSC, e.g., through rehydration. We also illustrate the state of sustainability research for DSSCs using the VOSviewer tool. To date, the term sustainability appears in 35 of 24,441 publications on DSSCs. In view of the global challenges, sustainability should be researched more seriously because it is as important as the efficiency and stability of DSSCs.

Keywords: dye sensitized solar cell; recycling; non-toxic materials; circular economy; healthy energy systems; sustainability (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/14/13/3741/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/14/13/3741/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jeners:v:14:y:2021:i:13:p:3741-:d:579919

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().