Competition and development of high purity silicon powder industry
High purity silicon powder material is the basic raw material of information industry and solar photovoltaic power generation industry. Many developed countries in the world regard it as a strategic material, and implement policy encouragement and financial support for it. Ten years ago, the world's production of high-purity silicon powder materials was mainly concentrated in seven companies from developed countries such as the United States, Germany and Japan, while China relied on imports to meet its domestic demand for a long time due to technological blockade and market monopoly.
Recently, many large polysilicon companies at home and abroad have stopped production, gone bankrupt or changed shareholders. The domestic photovoltaic industry policy also has a new adjustment opinion, for the future development of high-purity silicon powder has brought new factors of change. However, with the rapid development of the photovoltaic industry and significant cost reduction, the impact on the industrial structure and energy structure adjustment, carbon dioxide emission reduction and environmental governance began to appear. In the process of comprehensive market competition, how to adapt the production and supply of high-purity silicon powder raw materials as the source of the industrial chain to the new changes is the focus of this paper.
Due to the profit-driven capital, many enterprises are venturing into the unfamiliar polysilicon industry. There are nearly 50 polysilicon enterprises in China, but most of them have no ability to improve technology and management, and cannot form the ability to continuously reduce costs. Some enterprises have stopped production for a short time after putting into production, and some enterprises have declared to stop production or go bankrupt before putting into production. Severe market baptism has ruthlessly eliminated these enterprises; Even for enterprises with scale effects, some of the backward production capacity invested in the early stage has been eliminated. Restricted by technical teams, financial strength, equipment level, environmental protection requirements and energy prices, many large enterprises have lost their market competitiveness, faced with or completed restructuring, relocation or bankruptcy, and this part of production capacity has also become ineffective. Blind development of the whole industry, disorderly competition, causing huge losses and painful lessons. Although the results are necessary for the development of the market, the losses are particularly high in China. By mid-2016, only 17 of the 58 domestic polysilicon companies that had applied to enter the park were in production, and only six were in full production. Effective high-purity silicon powder capacity is the output that can truly form sustainable market supply capacity.
With the evolution of the trade war between Europe and the United States against China's photovoltaic industry, such as "double-resistant" and low-cost dumping of polysilicon materials, China's photovoltaic industry has been actively improved and evolved when it suffered heavy losses, which has attracted extensive attention from the government, media and society. The State Council, various ministries and commissions, and provincial and municipal governments have respectively issued more than 20 plans and policies to revitalize the photovoltaic industry, comprehensively promoting the restructuring and upgrading of the photovoltaic industry and promoting the application of domestic photovoltaic.
Development of high purity silicon powder production technology
In addition to REC and SunEdison (MEMC) using the silane method, international polysilicon production is trichlorosilane method. REC uses a silane CVD furnace to produce rod-like electron-grade ultra-high purity polysilicon and FBR to produce granular solar grade polysilicon.
