Global anthropogenic tellurium cycles for 1940-2010

作者：Kavlak Goksin; Graedel T E^*

来源：Resources, Conservation and Recycling, 2013, 76: 21-26.

DOI：10.1016/j.resconrec.2013.04.007

• Material flow analysis
• Thin-film materials
• Photovoltaics
• CdTe
• Recycling
• Resource management

Tellurium is increasingly used in solar photovoltaics in the form of cadmium-telluride (CdTe) thin films. There are concerns regarding whether tellurium availability could be a constraint on large-scale deployment of CdTe photovoltaics. The present work brings a new perspective to the discussion of tellurium availability by providing the first extant global tellurium cycles constructed with material flow analysis principles. The tellurium cycles, for 1940-2010, present information on the production, fabrication and manufacturing, use, and resource management stages during this period. The results of the analysis show that during 1940-2010 approximately 11 Gg of refined tellurium was produced. This represents about 4.5% of the tellurium that was extracted from the ground during copper mining. Almost 80% of the refined tellurium, 8.5 Gg, was dissipated into end-uses such as metallurgical additives to iron, steel, and nonferrous metals, and thereby lost to potential reuse. As of 2010, the in-use tellurium stock is estimated at 1.1 Gg, which mainly accumulated after 1990s with the increasing tellurium use in electronics, specifically photovoltaic and thermoelectric devices. Because tellurium is a byproduct of copper ores, its supply can be enhanced by more attention to recovery during processing of the copper parent. Tellurium can also, in principle, be recovered from end-of-life electronics; the increasing in-use stock indicates the potential for significant end-of-life recycling in the coming decades.

• 出版日期2013-7