Silicon Metal 411

The metal silicon smelting belongs to the high energy consumption production, the metal silicon production in our country has been for a long time, with the national energy policy tightening and the development of energy saving and emission reduction, as well as the promotion of new energy, metal silicon smelting has become a primary product and process. Many emerging domestic energy enterprises have built a series of circular industrial chains, such as metal silicon, polysilicon, monocrystalline silicon, solar cells, etc. , the next few years will certainly affect the development of China's entire energy sector and the application of new energy.

Metal silicon is produced using the carbothermal method, which is a method of smelting silica and carbonaceous reducing agents in a submerged arc furnace. The purity of the silicon produced in this way is 97% to 98%, and such silicon can generally be used for metallurgical purposes. If you want to obtain higher-grade silicon, you need to refine it to remove impurities to obtain metallic silicon with a purity of 99.7% to 99.8%.

At present, the production process route of carbothermal method for producing metal silicon in China is: silica is commonly used as raw material, petroleum coke, charcoal, wood chips, low-ash coal, etc. are used as reducing agents, and it is smelted at high temperature in a submersible electric furnace to obtain silica from silica. Metal silicon is restored, which is a slag-free submerged arc high-temperature smelting process.