A unique producer of solar grade silicon
Fesil Sunergy AS is positioned to be a producer and supplier of high quality solar grade silicon based on a unique metallurgic production process.
ENERGY-EFFECTIVE. Liquid metal through the production steps makes it unnecessary to melt the metal more than one time, and this makes the Solsilc-process very energy-effective.
Expected production start of the pilot plant is during the fourth quarter 2009, and the full-scale plant is planned to be operative in 2011–12.
The market for solar grade silicon is fast growing, and Fesil Sunergy will help to satisfy the present undersupply of solar grade silicon in the world.
Fesil Sunergy was established in 2006 to develop a new technology and production process for upgraded metallurgical silicon (UMG-Si) for the solar industry. The production process is called the Solsilc-process, and is a metallurgical production process developed through 10 years R&D collaboration between Sintef, ECN, ScanArc and Fesil. Fesil Sunergy is located in Trondheim, Mid-Norway, and the owners are Fesil Venture AS and Sunergy Investco BV.
Production of solar grade silicon
Silicon is a critical raw material in production of photovoltaic systems. Fesil Sunergy’s ambition is to become one of the top three producers of UMG-Si for the solar industry, and Fesil Sunergy aims to be recognized with the leading metallurgical refining process for solar grade silicon (Sog-Si).
The process has shown promising results in small scale tests, and Fesil Sunergy is now building a pilot plant in Trondheim with a capacity of 100 tons UMG-Si a year.
70 % less energy
The Solsilc-process needs very pure quartz, clean carbon black and electrodes with low contamination. These high quality raw materials are costly, but silicon in a liquid state through the whole process, a unique refinement process and few process steps compensate for the increased raw material costs.
Liquid metal through the production steps makes it unnecessary to melt the metal more than one time, and this makes the Solsilc-process very energy-effective. The whole process will use about 70% less energy than a standard chemical production process to produce an equal amount of Sog-Si. This also makes the process very cost-effective. Also the discharge of greenhouse gases is low.
With the Solsilc-process, Fesil Sunergy can produce high quality UMG-Si that can be used unblended in production of ingots for wafers. We have demonstrated high quality on our UMG-Si, and our goal is to produce first class UMG-Si with low contamination.
Commercialization
The pilot plant is the first step in commercializing the Solsilc-process. Next step is an up-scaling of the pilot plant to a semi-industrial plant with production capacity of approximately 1.250 tons UMG-Si annually. In parallel, a full-scale plant (Greenfield) with production capacity of 7 000 – 10 000 tons UMG-Si annually will be built. The full-scale plant is planned to be operative in 2011–12.
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