Health, safety and environmental risks from the operation of CdTe and CIS thin-film modules
✍ Scribed by Hartmut Steinberger
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 1998
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 135 KB
- Volume
- 6
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 1062-7995
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✦ Synopsis
This paper identi®es the materials embedded in one type of CIS (copper indium diselenide) and four dierent types of CdTe (cadmium telluride) thin-®lm modules. It refers to the results of our outdoor leaching experiments on photovoltaic (PV) samples broken into small fragments. Estimations for module accidents on the roof or in the garden of a residential house, e.g. leaching of hazardous materials into water or soil, are given. The outcomes of our estimations show some module materials released into water or soil during leaching accidents. In a worst-case scenario for CdTe modules the leached cadmium concentration in the collected water is estimated to be no higher than the German drinking water limit concentration. For the CIS module scenario the estimated leached element concentrations are about one to two orders of magnitude below the German drinking water limit concentration. For broken CIS and CdTe modules on the ground no critical increase of the natural element concentration is observed after leaching into the soil for 1 year.