The industrial silicon industry seeks good solutions to the challenges

"Industrial silicon as the 'silicon energy' industry chain of the most basic raw materials, downstream demand continues to improve, enterprises have a strong willingness to expand production, development is the right time." Duan Debing, member of the Standing Committee and vice president of the China Non-Ferrous Metal Industry Association, said at the 2022 Annual Conference of China Industrial Silicon Industry Chain.

Industrial silicon is mainly used in aluminum alloy industry, non-ferrous alloy additives, chemical industry, after a series of processes to generate polycrystalline silicon and monocrystalline silicon, for photovoltaic industry and electronic industry use. In 2021, China produced 2.7 million tons of industrial silicon and consumed 1.86 million tons, accounting for 78% and 55% of the global total, respectively; During the same period, the export volume was 778,000 tons, accounting for more than 50% of the total overseas industrial silicon consumption. Driven by growing demand in the polysilicon and organosilicon sectors, the country's industrial silicon production is expected to increase to more than 3.1 million tons in 2022, with more than 3 million tons of new planned industrial silicon capacity announced.

Although the industrial silicon industry is developing at the right time, there are still three challenges to high-quality development, which are the urgent need to optimize and upgrade the industrial structure, the weak technological innovation ability, and the high pressure of green, low-carbon and environmental protection.

"China is the world's largest producer, consumer and exporter of industrial silicon, but there is a shortage of high-quality silicon, insufficient supply, scarce energy resources, and difficulties in industrial iteration and upgrading." "Mr. Duan said. According to statistics, in 2021, the production capacity of domestic industrial silicon devices reached 5 million tons/year, and there were about 200 production enterprises, most of which were less than 20,000 tons/year. The whole industry showed the characteristics of small and scattered. In addition, the season has a great impact on the production of industrial silicon industry. Due to the abundant hydropower resources in the south, industrial silicon enterprises make use of the relatively low electricity price in the wet season to carry out seasonal production, so that the capacity of some devices is temporarily idle.

Duan Debing proposed that in order to ensure the supply of basic raw materials and related materials in the silicon-based materials industry chain, efforts should be made to solve the supply bottlenecks of high-quality silica and high-quality reducing agents and other raw materials, constantly improve the supply capacity and quality of industrial silicon, polycrystalline silicon and other key materials, and promote the optimization and upgrading of product structure. At the same time, science to deal with industrial structure adjustment, the relationship between transfer and energy consumption of the double control of rigid constraint, more applicable to stock capacity through advanced technology to transform and improve the industrial concentration, and orderly promote, including industrial silicon, silicon materials industry chain integration to the resource advantage area gathered in new projects, promote the adjustment of industrial structure optimization.

"Industrial silicon production should be mainly to meet the domestic market, establish a supply system of internal circulation as the main, external circulation as the auxiliary, and do a good job of the dynamic balance between the supply and demand of industrial silicon." China nonferrous metals industry association silicon industry branch, deputy secretary-general, assistant general manager of Beijing antaike Ma Haitian says should be taken to improve the export tax rebates and other measures to regulate the disorder of industrial grade silicon exports, in order to strengthen the management of export, support enterprises to go out, the use of overseas energy and resources, cooperation to establish high load can project silicon industry.

Ma suggested that the industrial chain products should be orderly extended to the downstream, improve product added value, especially in the field of high-purity silicon, should strive to develop electronic grade high-purity silicon materials, gradually solve the chip "bottleneck" problem, for the leap-forward development of China's semiconductor industry to do a good job of raw material guarantee.

In the face of the problem of weak industrial silicon technology, Duan Debing believes that in recent years, China's industrial silicon field has realized a breakthrough in the production process of 25000kVA(kilovolt ampere) large furnace. The output scale and market share of large furnace are expanding increasingly, and the supporting capacity of mechanization and automation is increasingly perfect. However, in the process of industrial silicon furnace production, there are still some problems such as product quality is not stable enough, technical and economic indicators are not ideal enough, and the gap between green and intelligent digitalization is large.

In order to cope with this challenge, experts suggest that scientific and technological innovation should be placed in a more prominent and important position. It is necessary to adhere to scientific and technological innovation to solve the technological and equipment process bottleneck of industry development, but also to adhere to management innovation and development mode innovation to promote upstream and downstream integrated development.

In this regard, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology raw materials Department of nonferrous metals division director Wang Zhong said that the relevant departments will organize enterprises, research institutes to jointly carry out scientific research, continue to promote the development of the industry. At the same time, we will accelerate the development and application of silicon-based materials, encourage the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain to build industrial alliances that closely combine production, education, research and application, improve product quality, and meet the development requirements of strategic emerging industries such as new energy.

Due to the rising price of carbon reducing agent and electricity price, the investment in safety and environmental protection is constantly increasing, and the investment in innovation and research and development is increasing, leading to the increase of production cost, investment and operation expense of industrial silicon enterprises in China. For small furnace enterprises, due to the large investment, they cannot apply more environmentally friendly and energy-saving equipment, which restricts the development of green, low-carbon and environmental protection in the industry.

In order to solve the challenges brought by the pressure of green, low-carbon and environmental protection, experts suggest that according to the requirements of industrial policies and "double control" of energy consumption, the existing production capacity should be encouraged to gradually increase the proportion of clean energy application, and establish a low-emission silicon based new energy industrial base with a high proportion of renewable energy.

Wang Zhong said that the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology will work with relevant departments to strengthen industry self-discipline, standardize the development order, play the role of market mechanism, guide the industrial silicon industry to resources and clean energy enrichment areas orderly transfer, increase the proportion of renewable resources use, but also to avoid the risk of overheating investment in organic silicon, industrial silicon.