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Improved estimates for Te and Se availability from Cu anode slimes and recent price trends
Author(s) -
Green Martin A.
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
progress in photovoltaics: research and applications
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.286
H-Index - 131
eISSN - 1099-159X
pISSN - 1062-7995
DOI - 10.1002/pip.703
Subject(s) - anode , economic shortage , refining (metallurgy) , tailings , silicon , environmental science , natural resource economics , materials science , geology , metallurgy , economics , chemistry , government (linguistics) , electrode , linguistics , philosophy
The recent Si supply shortage has provided a foretaste of what might occur when a photovoltaic technology becomes materials‐supply constrained. Non‐silicon technologies, involving some of the least abundant materials in the earth's crust, have even more fundamental problems with material availability. For both Te and Se, Cu anode slimes produced during Cu electrolytic refining provide the present major supply stream. The availability of material from such slimes is reassessed using recent data and shown to be more limited than earlier estimates. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.