{"id":330054,"date":"2024-05-25T10:41:44","date_gmt":"2024-05-25T08:41:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=330054"},"modified":"2024-05-25T10:41:47","modified_gmt":"2024-05-25T08:41:47","slug":"coals-importance-for-solar-panel-manufacturing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=330054","title":{"rendered":"Coal\u2019s Importance For Solar Panel Manufacturing"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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From Watts Up With That?<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

From blog.unpopular-truth.com<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Lars Schernikau<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Content<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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  1. Metallurgical-grade silicon making<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. Carbon sources for silicon making: Coal, petcoke, hardwood<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n
  3. Solar-grade silicon (SoG-Si) making and wafering<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n
  4. Finalizing solar panel manufacturing<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n
  5. Coal and China<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n
  6. Summary<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    Coal is not the favorite \u201cchild\u201d these days. It seems that almost the entire western political world has sworn to send coal to its grave.<\/em><\/strong> Not only have the United Nations and the IEA literally declared \u201cwar\u201d on coal, but countless political, activist organizations and even leading financial institutions have pledged, if it had to be in their power, to immediately stop the usage of coal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The reason for all of this is of course this \u201cterrible\u201d chemical element called carbon (number 6 on the periodic table). Please remember though that the same carbon is the 2nd<\/sup> most abundant element in the human body and it is a key building block for all life on Earth. By the way, carbon is not only essential because CO2<\/sub> is plant food and plants grow best at 1.500 ppm of CO2<\/sub> in the air (current atmospheric content is 420 ppm), CO2<\/sub> is also a greenhouse gas, contributing to keeping our Earth temperature temperate and livable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    I have to mention that the prize for keeping Earth livable has to go to water, or better yet, water vapor, the most important and most abundant greenhouse gas. We all understand that increased greenhouse gas concentrations will contribute to slight warming, though only a few of us have learnt \u2013 including me only after studying it \u2013 that there are so-called saturation levels to consider which means that higher concentrations of any greenhouse gas have less and less impact on temperature changes (the warming impact logarithmically declines).<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    But today\u2019s blog is not about globally measured temperature changes, its causes and its negative or positive impacts, but about coal and solar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    So why are coal and solar so closely interlinked? Why is it that solar panel manufacturing is impossible without coal?<\/em><\/strong>  I always thought that coal is \u201conly\u201d important for electricity, contributing to 36% of global power demand, or over 8h of 24h every single day of the year. I always thought that coal is \u201conly\u201d required to produce all steel. Let us have a look at solar panel manufacturing, which is really about silicon production.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The vast majority of all energy required to make solar panels is consumed during silicon production, purification, and wafering. But first let\u2019s talk about purity. 6N pure silicon means 99.9999% purity level, 11N pure silicon means 99.999999999% purity level, you get the point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    You may now have a first glimpse of the chemical and mechanical difficulty of making such a pure metal from a natural product.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    In this blog post, you will see how important uninterrupted power supply is, especial for industrial processes such as silicon smelting. Obviously, this power comes from coal in China, and cannot come from wind or solar. Let\u2019s dig deeper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    1. Metallurgical-grade silicon making and high purity quartz (HPQ)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Elemental silicon (Si) is not a naturally available element. Largely unchanged for over 100 years, silicon (Si) is produced by chemically reducing mined high purity quartz (SiO2) using carbon (C)<\/em><\/strong> in submerged-arc furnaces. The arc furnaces are each powered by up to 45 megawatts of electricity also to produce the heat required for the processes. As the mix of quartz stone and carbon heats, the carbon reacts with the oxygen in the quartz and forms CO gas, this is called silicon smelting<\/strong>. Consider it like iron ore (Fe2O3) being reduced using coke from coking coal (C) to make iron (Fe).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    All simplified<\/p>\n\n\n\n