After standing dormant since 2018, REC Silicon’s manufacturing facility in Moses Lake, Washington, is as soon as once more processing granular polysilicon. The corporate launched an replace to shareholders on the manufacturing facility’s restart final month.
Archive picture of polysilicon on the former SolarWorld Oregon manufacturing facility.
Preliminary startup started in late October, and the corporate’s Silane III unit got here on-line to supply the primary granular polysilicon on the web site in 5 years. REC Silicon will proceed to deliver capability on-line whereas stabilizing every step. Full capability needs to be reached in This autumn 2024.
“Our focus is on stability and growing capability utilization as quickly as sensible. Our workers’ expertise in beginning up and working complicated steady chemical processes meshed with steady polysilicon processes is immediately indicated in the place we’re proper now,” mentioned Kurt Levens, REC Silicon CEO.
First deliveries of high-purity granular polysilicon ought to begin in Q1 2024. Hanwha Options has signed on to buy 100% of REC Silicon’s manufacturing for the subsequent 10 years. Hanwha intends to make use of the polysilicon provide on the Qcells ingot, wafer, cell and panel manufacturing facility at the moment beneath building in Georgia. That manufacturing facility is predicted to ramp manufacturing in late 2024.
Persevering with the American provide chain pattern, REC Silicon is accessing high-purity silicon metallic from Ferroglobe’s vegetation in Alabama, Ohio and West Virginia, and from Mississippi Silicon’s manufacturing facility within the South.
A byproduct of polysilicon manufacturing is silane fuel, and REC Silicon might probably provide that useful materials to battery producers for anodes. No provide agreements in that space have been introduced.
