A German company with an international reach, Loser Chemie GmbH has developed a number of critical processes that reduce the environmental impact of solar. And better still, they are working on ways of increasing the efficiency of installed PV systems. We spoke to two of the company’s leading lights: Ulrich Loser and Wolfram Palitzsch.
PES: Welcome back to the magazine. For the benefit of new readers, would you like to explain a little about the company’s background and explain how you serve the solar industry?
Ulrich Loser: Loser Chemie GmbH is a chemically-focussed organisation with its main business in the field of water chemistry. We know about the future limits in the availability of resources, such as water or metals, and so recycling is required as the most advisable end-of-life strategy and to save raw materials from becoming waste. For the
PV industry, we have developed a range of cutting-edge, environmentally-friendly recycling technologies for photovoltaic production scrap and end-of-life waste. The recycling of these wastes can be argued from environmental, political and economic perspectives.
PES: And how has business been since we last spoke?
Wolfram Palitzsch: We tried to apply our experience in the field of hydrometallurgy to achieve the so-called zero-waste-concept. As you know, we started with our recycling strategy only by use of photovoltaic production waste. At the time, the goal was to find an universal technology that would dissolve all of the materials used in thin film photovoltaic technologies, e.g. indium, gallium, tellurium, molybdenum, and so on.
With a little luck, we found a fantastic chemical compound with all these qualities. But in addition to manufacturing waste, overspray and over-layered shields, the problem was still unsolved for laminated (encapsulated) and whole modules. This was because we could not reach the semiconductor layers inside of the sandwiched structures by our liquids.
