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Research on LCA Data and Environmental Impact of Industrial Silicon Smelting and High Purity Crystal Silicon Purification

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Abstract

High purity polysilicon is the core raw material of solar cell, which is considered as environmental protection product. Due to the high energy consumption and environmental pollution in the course of its life cycle, the life cycle assessment (LCA) method is used to quantitatively calculate its environmental impact and summarize its emission reduction. Firstly, the LCA models of 1t industrial silicon and 1t high-purity polysilicon produced by modified Siemens process are established, and then the life cycle data of resource input, energy consumption, emission and comprehensive impact on the environment obtained from actual industrial production are analyzed. The main environmental impacts in its life cycle are divided into 1 ~ 10 impact categories to find the key factors that determine the environmental load. Results The LCA model was established and the environmental effects of the newly designed and modified Siemens process route on high purity polysilicon were compared. The environmental impacts of industrial silicon production and modified Siemens process for high-purity polysilicon production are 4.53 and 4.99, respectively. According to the quantitative results, the improvement focuses on reducing the power consumption of high-purity polysilicon in the production stage and optimizing the recycling of waste in the production process.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful for financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 51804147) and the Yunnan Province Department of Education (No. 2018JS018).

Funding

The authors are grateful for financial support from the Ten Thousand Talent Plans for Young Top-notch Talents of Yunnan Province (No. YNWR-QNBJ-2020–022) and the Major Projects of Yunnan Province (No. 202102AB080013) and the Key Science and Technology Specific Projects of Yunnan Province (N0. 202202AG050012).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Metallurgical and Energy Engineering, Kunming University of Science and Technology, Kunming, 650093, China

    Kaizhi Jiang, Zhengjie Chen & Wenhui Ma

  2. State Key Laboratory of Complex Nonferrous Metal Resources Cleaning Utilization in Yunnan Province, Kunming University of Science and Technology, Kunming, 650093, China

    Kaizhi Jiang, Zhengjie Chen & Wenhui Ma

  3. The National Engineering Laboratory for Vacuum Metallurgy, Kunming University of Science and Technology, Kunming, 650093, China

    Zhengjie Chen & Wenhui Ma

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Contributions

Kaizhi Jiang: Conceptualization, Resources, Writing - review & editing, Visualization, Validation, Supervision. Zhengjie Chen: Formal analysis, Validation, Data curation, Writing-original draft, Writing-review & editing. Wenhui Ma:Conceptualization, Methodology, Validation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Data curation.

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Correspondence to Zhengjie Chen.

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Jiang, K., Chen, Z. & Ma, W. Research on LCA Data and Environmental Impact of Industrial Silicon Smelting and High Purity Crystal Silicon Purification. Silicon 16, 573–583 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12633-023-02698-8

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