Abstract
Along with the global trend of increasing interest in environmental protection, the silicon manufacturing process will use a large number of carbonaceous reducers and produce a large number of carbon emissions, which is of deep concern to the Chinese companies. Previous research has calculated the amount of carbon emissions incurred in silicon production, while research on the factors that affect carbon emissions during the silicon production process has been scarce. The effect of the carbonaceous reducers’ consumption and different furnace types (8.5 MVA and 12.5 MVA) on the carbon emissions during silicon production was investigated using statistical analysis of the actual production data in order to lower the carbon emissions of silicon production. Based on the results, the soft coal has the greatest influence on carbon emission when 8.5 MVA furnace is used to produce industrial silicon. When 12.5 MVA furnace is used, petroleum coke has the greatest impact on carbon emissions. But electricity is still the biggest contributor to carbon emissions. Using the 12.5 MVA furnace will reduce CO2 emissions by approximately 74 kg per ton of product compared to an 8.5 MVA furnace. To obtain reduced carbon emissions in silicon production, we suggest that silicon manufacturers should try to use 12.5 MVA furnace type and optimize the ratio of carbon reducing agents used in different furnace types.
Highlights
In the last several decades, due to increasing concern about global warming, energy conservation and carbon emission reduction have attracted intense attention worldwide
In order to study the effect of carbon reducing agent consumption on carbon emissions during silicon production, Pearson's correlation coefficient method, which is widely used to evaluate the correlation of variables, and the trend diagram measuring the linear correlation between variables were used for analysis
We analyze the influence of soft coal, petroleum coke and wood block on the direct carbon emissions
Summary
In the last several decades, due to increasing concern about global warming, energy conservation and carbon emission reduction have attracted intense attention worldwide. The smelting process of industrial silicon is an extremely energy-intensive industrial process that mainly consumes carbonaceous reducing agents such as petroleum coke, soft coal and wood block that are used to produce silicon via carbon thermal reduction in a submerged arc furnace [9,10] These raw materials as well as the silica used as the silicon source are non-renewable resources and their use gives rise to considerable fossil CO2 emissions. Our recent research has turned up evidence of the correlation between the impurity content in silicon products and the consumption of different carbonaceous reducers [33] These studies provided different method for studying the impact of raw materials on carbon emissions in the industrial silicon production process
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