OnePlanet reaches new purity levels in silicon recovery from decommissioned panels (Courtesy of the Jacksonville Business Journal) — As companies have scrambled to find affordable inputs amid tariffs and other economic headwinds, OnePlanet has looked to the defunct to extract crucial raw materials. And this summer, the Jacksonville area company hit a milestone.
From its commercial demonstration facility in Green Cove Springs, OnePlanet can now produce high-purity silicon that carries ore-grade silver from decommissioned solar panels, its CEO told the Business Journal Friday.
OnePlanet CEO André Pujadas said through the company’s proprietary and automated process, dubbed Photovoltaic Recycling through Integrated Systems and Mechanics (PRISM), the facility is able to recover a silicon stream surpassing 95% purity, containing about 1% silver.
After developing the PRISM process for the last 15 months, production using the new method is expected to begin in the fourth quarter of 2027, with metallurgical-grade silicon and silver refining slated for 2030.
New fully integrated production lines of the PRISM system are expected to be installed at OnePlanet’s planned River City Project facility, the construction of which is being supported by a $14.5 million investment tax credit allocation under the federal Qualifying Advanced Energy Project (48C) program.
The most significant change helping OnePlanet reach new purity levels in silicon and silver was an entire redesign of its glass removal process, Pujadas said.
Disassembling out-of-use solar panels was done using a process that grinded the solar panels apart, but the new method of stripping down the unit uses a high-velocity medium that is targeted towards the panel in something of a wind tunnel, the CEO said.
By not crushing the panels, along with using no thermal or chemical separation steps, the silicon-and-silver-bearing cell material remains concentrated rather than diluted.
Attaining the high-grade materials allows for changes to the strategy behind OnePlanet’s business model, Pujadas said, allowing more wiggle room to reduce recycling fees and opening the door to refining raw materials.
“The better value that you have across the recycling process, the more resilience that you have to fluctuating gate fees or downward pressure on gate fees,” Pujadas said. So, for example, the asset owners would like to see the gate fees approach parity. They’d like to see it at landfill cost, or below landfill cost, or even better at zero cost. So, the only way to get there is to develop or recover a product that harnesses some level of premium in the marketplace.”
Additionally, reaching such a high level of silicon purity is the first step toward expanding its role in the supply chain, a key part of OnePlanet’s strategy the company is aiming to reach by 2030.
As OnePlanet continues to develop its process, with plans to hit up to 3.2 million modules a year, the next step for the company is to begin entering the refining stage, converting the material into metallurgical-grade silicon and co-producing silver, the CEO said.
“… the reason for that is this silicon that’s being produced, we view it as an intermediate stream that can become the raw material or the input to further downstream refining,” Pujadas said.
The company aims to reach different positions along the value chain, capturing margins at different points, he added. Metallurgical-grade silicon is the precursor to make polysilicon, which is used as a semiconductor material in solar panels.
Additionally the raw materials that OnePlanet extracts can also be used for other electronic grades of silicon, the CEO said.
Positioning itself in the Jacksonville area gives OnePlanet the logistical capabilities it needs to receive the supply for its recycling business, with access to a large amount of decommissioned solar panels in Florida and leveraging a diverse array of transportation assets from the CSX rail line to Jaxport. Combine that with more domestic policies and projects supporting domestic semiconductor production – including the Florida Semiconductor Institute planned in Jacksonville – Pujadas said he sees an ample environment tailored for OnePlanet.
“… we are today 100% dependent on foreign silicon. Mainly, most of it comes out of China,” Pujadas said. “You compound that with geopolitical tensions. You compound that with tariffs, it really becomes an issue and introduces a significant amount of volatility and a lot of unknowns that these guys have to face on their process, right. So I think it’s great.”
As a veteran in the steel and metals recovery industry, working at Nucor Corporation, PSC Metals and Severstal, Pujadas said he sees the solar industry at a similar inflection point.
“We are exactly where the steel companies were 20 years ago,” Pujadas said. “What I’m trying to do with recycled silicon is the same thing that they did with recycled scrap metal, using that as a substrate to make steel.”