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The Effect of Silica and Reducing Agent on the Contents of Impurities in Silicon Produced

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Abstract

Petroleum coke, soft coal and silica are the main raw materials used to produce silicon, and impurities in them remarkably influence the purity of silicon products. Two different furnace types (8.5 MVA and 12.5 MVA) were used in this study, each of which has two different sub-types. The influence of the three raw materials on the contents of multiple impurities in silicon was systematically studied using a large industrial data set. The correlation between the total impurity contents in silicon products and the different amounts of raw materials used was analyzed by a linear regression method. The correlation between the percentage of impurity contents in silicon products in raw materials and the different raw material consumption was also investigated using the same method. The results showed that the total percentage of impurities in silicon products was closely associated with the amounts of raw materials used and the correlation coefficient reached ≥98%. The slopes of the linear fitting lines showed that using coal as the reducing agent significantly increased the percentage of impurities in silicon products followed by petroleum coke and silica. Comparing the 12.5 MVA and 8.5 MVA furnaces, the variation between the different raw materials and the percentage of impurities in silicon products was also represented by a linear fit. The 12.5 MVA furnaces exhibited more efficient smelting by producing the highest-quality silicon products under the same amounts of raw materials. The results may provide guidance and a theoretical basis for the future cleaner production of silicon.

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Acknowledgments

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).

Availability of Data and Material

All data generated or analysed during this study are included in this published article.

Funding

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).

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Authors and Affiliations

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

    Hongmei Zhang, Zhengjie Chen, Wenhui Ma, Shijie Cao, Kaizhi Jiang & Yaqian Zhu

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

    Hongmei Zhang, Zhengjie Chen, Wenhui Ma, Shijie Cao, Kaizhi Jiang & Yaqian Zhu

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

    Zhengjie Chen, Wenhui Ma, Shijie Cao, Kaizhi Jiang & Yaqian Zhu

Authors
  1. Hongmei Zhang
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  2. Zhengjie Chen
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  4. Shijie Cao
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Contributions

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

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Correspondence to Zhengjie Chen or Wenhui Ma.

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“For “Ethical statement”, This article does not contain any studies with human participants or animals performed by any of the authors.In this experiment, we did not collect any samples of human and animals. The human hair sample used in this paper is only a China national certified reference standard material, which was purchased from a commercial institute in China.”

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Zhang, H., Chen, Z., Ma, W. et al. The Effect of Silica and Reducing Agent on the Contents of Impurities in Silicon Produced. Silicon 14, 2779–2792 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12633-021-01072-w

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12633-021-01072-w

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