Improving the economic and environmental efficiency of photovoltaic panel recycling using material flow costing.

Ranjbar, Mehrdad; Yousefi Nejad Attari, Mahdi; Ghazanfari, Hossein

doi:10.22034/jrenew.2026.250350

Improving the economic and environmental efficiency of photovoltaic panel recycling using material flow costing.

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

mehrdad ranjbar ¹

mahdi Yousefi Nejad Attari ²

hossein ghazanfari ¹

¹ Department of Industrial Engineering, Ro.C., Islamic Azad University, Roudehen, Iran

² Department of Industrial Engineering, Bon.C., Islamic Azad University, Bonab, Iran

10.22034/jrenew.2026.250350

Abstract

The rapid growth of renewable energy technologies, especially photovoltaic systems, has made end-of-life management of this equipment a major environmental and economic challenge. Although recycling solar panels at the end of their life is a valuable source of recyclable materials, existing recycling processes are often inefficient and result in significant waste of energy, materials, and costs. This study uses material flow costing as an effective analytical tool to examine the recycling process of photovoltaic panels. By making costs transparent and optimizing the system, material flow costing identifies valuable and worthless material flows and helps improve performance. Also, by incorporating the concept of a closed-loop supply chain, a framework is presented in which recycling becomes an integral part of the entire supply chain. The main objective of this research is to develop a comprehensive approach to improve the economic and environmental performance of photovoltaic panel recycling through the combined application of material flow costing and closed-loop supply chain methods. The proposed closed-loop supply chain model shows that the establishment of local collection centers and the application of economic incentives can increase the efficiency of recycling. In this study, attention to climatic and environmental conditions is considered to be one of the most important limitations of the research. The three quantitatively defined centers, disassembly, thermal and chemical treatment, and industrial reuse, show 30%, 28%, and 25.2% losses in the costing of photovoltaic panel recycling, respectively.

Keywords

Photovoltaic

material flow cost accounting

closed-loop

supply chain

Subjects

Renewable and New Energy

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