Anti-freeze Could Lower Cost of Solar Cells

Dean Sigler Electric Powerplants, Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

We’ve examined many attempts to make solar cells, batteries and fuel cells less expensive and to use abundant, easily found materials in their manufacture.  Engineers at Oregon State University in Corvallis, Oregon may have crafted a process to manufacture budget solar cells with anti-freeze and relatively cheap metals as key components. Ethylene glycol, found in many automotive antifreeze products, acts as a low-cost solvent “that functions well in a ‘continuous flow’ reactor,” according to OSU, “an approach to making solar cells that cost less and avoid toxic compounds, while further expanding the use of solar energy.” The last sentence stopped your editor cold, since ethylene glycol is a neurotoxin, playing havoc with brains, livers and kidneys.  Reading the researchers’ paper published in Material Letters and available online, perhaps the effects of flowing the cells’ metallic materials through a meso-fluidic reactor with the antifreeze neutralizes the toxins, but that isn’t spelled out clearly (at least for your non-chemist editor). “Metallic materials” refers …