This international seminar was organized in Wp1 of FME-SUSOLTECH on 18th October 2019 at NTNU in Trondheim.

Material loss and recycling in the whole value chain for PV silicon production and use

More than 30 people registered for the event to listen the talks from both research and industrial organizations. The highlights can be summarized as:

  • The solar industry in China challenges with energy traffic due to the grid capacity and this has motivated the solar industry to use the solar energy to solve the problem through hydrogen, ammonia…production.
  • The polysilicon production in China has had significant developments and the energy consumption for the Siemens process has reached almost the theoretical value and it is not possible to be decreased more, while the energy consumptions for the metallurgical processes are currently lower and there are still possibilities to reduce the energy consumption for these processes.
  • REC Solar Norway presented the construction and new installations in Kristiansand to produce solar silicon, based on more materials recycling with targeting solar silicon production with low price.
  • There are specific issues to recycle silicon from the kerf and the developed patented processes were presented and discussed by JPM Silicon. The challenges may indicate that there is no feasible scenario to recycle Si kerf directly to solar silicon.
  • The application of silicon nitride crucibles in ingot casting is a way to maximize the resource productivity in the PV value chain, according to the Steuler Solar.
  • A new approach for Si kerf treatment for solar silicon recovery based on experimental and theoretical works at NTNU and Sintef was presented and discussed. The applied methodology has shown potential to solve some serious problems in Kerf recycling.
  • Monocrystalline silicon material quality loss and recycling in Czochralksi process were presented and discussed, there is still a couple of challenges in this process.
  • Enova presented their activities in supporting the growth of the solar market and the solar industry in Norway i.e. the REC Solar Norway, and how they support the solar research community.