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Life Cycle Assessment of Crystalline Silicon Wafers for Photovoltaic Power Generation

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Abstract

A life cycle assessment(LCA) was conducted over the modified Siemens method polycrystalline silicon(S-P-Si) wafer, the modified Siemens method single crystal silicon(S-S-Si) wafer, the metallurgical route polycrystalline silicon(M-P-Si) wafer and the metallurgical route single crystal silicon(M-S-Si) wafer from quartzite mining to wafer slicing in China. A large amount of data was investigated from relevant literature and factories in this study. Based on the contribution analysis and sensitivity analysis, the key points for improvement were found. The result included primary energy demand (PED), chemical oxygen demand (COD), SO2, NH3-N, NOX, CO2, and industrial water use (IWU). The above seven indexes were weighted and then added to get China’s thirteenth five-year plan for energy conservation and emission reduction total environmental impact indexes(ECER-135) of S-P-Si wafer, S-S-Si wafer, M-P-Si wafer and M-S-Si wafer were 1.47 × 10−9, 2.12 × 10−9, 3.30 × 10−10 and 1.22 × 10−9 respectively. The ECER-135 of silicon wafers purified with modified Siemens method was higher than that purified with metallurgical route by 3.1 times on average; the ECER-135 of single crystal silicon wafers production was larger than that of polysilicon wafers production by 2.3 times on average. When the four kinds of silicon wafers were used to generate the same amount of electricity for photovoltaic modules, the ECER-135 of S-P-Si wafer, S-S-Si wafer and M-S-Si wafer were 3.3, 4.5 and 2.8 times of that of M-P-Si wafer respectively. During the whole production process, the electricity consumption was of the highest sensitivity for ECER-135. PED had the highest contribution to the ECER-135 for four kinds of silicon wafers, mainly due to the use of thermal power. If hydropower were used instead of thermal power, the ECER-135 could be reduced by 46% to 62%.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the support of Kunming University of Science and Technology talent introduction research start-up fund project in 2018 (provincial) (KKSY201852006) and National college students innovation and entrepreneurship training program in 2019 (201910674002).

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Authors and Affiliations

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

    Mingyang Fan, Zhiqiang Yu, Wenhui Ma & Luyao Li

  2. State Key Laboratory of Complex Nonferrous Metal Resources Cleaning Utilization/The National Engineering Laboratory for Vacuum Metallurgy, Kunming University of Science and Technology, Kunming, 650093, China

    Zhiqiang Yu & Wenhui Ma

  3. Key Laboratory of Non-Ferrous Metals Vacuum Metallurgy of Yunnan Province/Engineering Research Center for Silicon Metallurgy and Silicon Materials of Yunnan Provincial Universities, Kunming University of Science and Technology, Kunming, 650093, China

    Zhiqiang Yu & Wenhui Ma

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  1. Mingyang Fan
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Fan, M., Yu, Z., Ma, W. et al. Life Cycle Assessment of Crystalline Silicon Wafers for Photovoltaic Power Generation. Silicon 13, 3177–3189 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12633-020-00670-4

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