TECHNOLOGY

Process

Timminco Solar produces solar grade silicon using a proprietary purification process that converts silicon metal into solar grade silicon for the solar photovoltaic industry.

Silicon metal (metallurgical grade) is sequentially oxidized, solidified, and mechanically processed into solar grade silicon "feedstock bricks". Strict process and quality controls are used to ensure product quality.

Customers can process solar grade silicon "feedstock bricks" pure or blended with polysilicon to achieve their own ingot specifications.

Manufacturing Operations

Our plant is located in Bécancour, Québec between Montreal and Québec City, Canada.

Advantages

The high costs and large amount of electricity required to produce polysilicon, the primary input into the vast majority of today’s solar PV wafers and cells, may be prohibitive to the proliferation of solar systems over the long term.  For these reasons, the government of China, one of the largest polysilicon-producing countries, has moved to curtail inefficient production of polysilicon to eliminate wasteful energy consumption and to avoid large capital investments that will not yield productive results.

As it continues to develop and grow, the solar industry will have to lower the resulting cost per watt of energy production to be competitive.  A big opportunity to reduce costs resides with the primary raw material, polysilicon.  With potential advantages of lower capital costs, and as much as four-times less electric energy consumption, Timminco Solar’s solar grade silicon has the potential to play an important role in the development of the solar industry as an alternative to polysilicon for the production of solar PV products.  Moreover, because Timminco Solar’s process for producing solar grade silicon consumes less electricity, we believe it to be a more environmentally friendly option than polysilicon.