A framework for end-of-life photovoltaics distribution routing optimization

Transportation cost accounts for a significant portion among the total cost of photovoltaics (PV) recycling. The transportation cost can be significantly reduced with a well-planned vehicle routing. A generic mathematical framework was developed to generate the optimal distribution scheme for transporting retired PV. A static and a dynamic recycling algorithms were created as the optimization tool in the framework. As for the output, the framework generates the optimal distribution scheme, the transportation cost of the optimal scheme, as well as the amount of End-of-life PV that each PV recycling center receives. A case study was included to test the effectiveness of the proposed framework. The optimal costs generated by two algorithms were compared with the baseline cost. As a result, the cost can be reduced by 53% when compared with the baseline. In addition, the static algorithm can obtain a result with decent accuracy and low computational cost.