Development of Metal Matrix Composite Through Recycling of End-of-Life Solar Panels for Marine Applications

Abstract

The marine engineering is shifting from steel and iron, to lightweight aluminium-silicon composites to make ships more energy-efficient. These materials are popular because high strength to weight ratio. The components required for making these composites lie in old solar panels. Most panels only last about 25–30 years, which hold aluminium and silicon are their parts and once they’re retired, they are called End of life solar panels. These End of life Solar panels, can be recycled into parts for building new marine components. It’s a smart move for a circular economy because recycling takes much less energy than making new aluminium from scratch. In this project, we used an optimized casting method to turn old panel parts into a composite that reached a strength of 227.03 MPa and a hardness of 79.73 HV. To finish up, we used specialized imaging and X-ray tools to examine the material’s structure in detail.