company news about What You May Not Know About Silicon Metal Production

Silicon metal is produced using the carbothermal method. This means that silica and carbon materials are used as reducing agents and then smelted in a submerged arc furnace. Silicon obtained in this way has a purity of 97% to 98%. This silicon is generally used in metallurgy. To obtain higher grades of silicon, it is refined to remove impurities. In this way, silicon metal can be obtained with a purity of 99.7% to 99.8%.

The smelting of silicon metal from quartz sand consists of several steps, including quartz sand manufacturing, charge preparation and submerged arc furnace smelting.

Generally speaking, high-quality quartz sand can be directly used to produce high-grade quartz glass products. It can even be processed into gem grade products such as crystals and tourmalines. Quartz sand of slightly poorer grade, but larger reserves, mining conditions are slightly better, the surrounding electricity is relatively cheap, suitable for the production of silicon metal.

Silicon metal is extracted from silicon dioxide. But not all silicon dioxide is suitable for manufacturing silicon metal. The ordinary sand we see everyday is not the real raw material for silicon metal. It is the quartz sand used in the industrial production mentioned above. The transformation from sand to silicon metal is accomplished after a multi-step reaction.

Silicon metal is usually classified according to the content of three major impurities: iron, aluminum and calcium. According to the percentage of iron, aluminum and calcium content in silicon metal, silicon metal can be classified into different grades such as 553, 441, 411, 421, 3303, 3305, 2202, 2502, 1501 and 1101.