System and method for separating tellurium from cadmium waste

1. A method for recycling a photovoltaic device comprising:

fragmenting a photovoltaic device;

exposing at least a portion of a photovoltaic device with a leaching agent to form a liquid phase, including tellurium and cadmium extracted from the photovoltaic device, and a solid phase;

separating the liquid phase from the solid phase;

contacting the liquid phase with a cation exchange resin;

collecting from the resin a tellurium containing solution comprising substantially all of the extracted tellurium; and

removing cadmium from the resin.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the fragments comprise cadmium, tellurium and glass.

3. The method of claim 1 , wherein the cadmium and the tellurium is extracted from the fragments at ambient temperature.

4. The method of claim 1 , wherein the leaching agent has a pH of less than 6.

5. The method of claim 1 , wherein the leaching agent includes sulfuric acid.

6. The method of claim 5 , wherein the sulfuric acid has a concentration of at least 0.5 M.

7. The method of claim 6 , wherein a ratio of hydrogen peroxide to glass is less than 5.0.

8. The method of claim 1 , wherein the leaching agent includes hydrogen peroxide.

9. The method of claim 1 , wherein the leaching agent has a liquid to solid ratio that is less than 480 mL/kg.

10. The method of claim 1 , wherein the liquid phase has a pH range of 0.0 to 1.0.

11. The method of claim 1 , wherein the cadmium is removed from the resin at room temperature.

12. The method of claim 1 , wherein the cadmium is removed from the resin with an acid that has a pH of less than 6.

13. The method of claim 12 , wherein cadmium is removed from the resin with an acid that has a pH of less than 4.

14. The method of claim 1 , wherein cadmium is removed from the resin with an acid that has a pH of less than 2.

15. The method of claim 1 , wherein the cadmium is removed from the resin with sulfuric acid.

16. The method of claim 1 , wherein the cation exchange resin is an iminodiacetic acid chelating resin.

17. The method of claim 1 , wherein the cation exchange resin is an acid cation resin containing at least 8% divinylbenzene.

18. The method of claim 1 , wherein the cation exchange resin is first swelled with water.

19. The method of claim 1 , further comprising removing at least one additional metal from the resin.

20. The method of claim 19 , wherein the additional metal includes copper.

21. A method for separating cadmium and tellurium comprising:

contacting a tellurium-containing solution with a cation exchange resin;

collecting from the resin a solution comprising substantially all of the tellurium of the tellurium-containing solution; and

removing cadmium from the cation exchange resin.

22. The method of claim 21 , further comprising removing at least one additional metal from the resin.

23. The method of claim 22 , wherein the additional metal includes copper.