Production of Porous Glass-foam Materials from Photovoltaic Panel Waste Glass

The Solar energy production is growing quickly for the global demand of renewa-ble one, decrease the dependence on fossil fuels. However, disposing of used pho-tovoltaic (PV) panels will be a serious environmental challenge in the future dec-ades since the solar panels would eventually become a source of hazardous waste. The potential of waste solar panel glass to generate porous glass material with the addition of CaCO3 and water glass was assessed in this study. The porous glass firing temperature range, from 830{\deg}C - 910{\deg}C, was determined using a simu-lation of heating microscope technique. The created samples have the smallest volumetric density of 0.25 g/cm3 and the largest water absorption of 303.08 wt.%. This indicates that the image analysis of samples during the heating process could be used to identify the firing temperature for better foaming, which was favorably indicated by specific physicochemical parameters. The created glass-foam mate-rials with an apparent porosity up to 81.49% could be used as a water-retaining medium in hydroponic and aquaponic systems
Comment: 12 pages, 7 figures