"The scale of China's silicon industry has been greatly improved, technological progress has achieved remarkable results, and the product structure has been continuously optimized and upgraded." On September 12, at the 2023 China Silicon Industry Conference held in Baotou City, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, Ge Honglin, president of China Nonferrous Metals Industry Association, said that China's silicon industry has taken a new step in high-quality development.
Reporters learned at the meeting that by the end of 2022, the annual production capacity of industrial silicon in China was 5.7 million tons, accounting for 80.2% of the world, and the output of industrial silicon in that year was 3.25 million tons, accounting for 79.9% of the world; The export volume is 651,000 tons, accounting for 44.3% of the total foreign consumption; compared with 2012, the output of industrial silicon in China has increased by 1.9 times, and the global share has increased by 21 percentage points.
"At present, China has established an advanced technology system of silicon industry with completely independent intellectual property rights." Ge Honglin said that the technological progress of China's silicon industry has achieved remarkable results. The world's top industrial silicon enterprises, the top five polysilicon enterprises and the top 10 silicon wafer enterprises are all in China, and the technological equipment has made innovative breakthroughs, and the new production capacity equipment of the silicon industry has all been localized.
At present, China has made breakthroughs in the construction of large-scale equipment, green process, production automation and standardization of raw materials in the industrial silicon sector, the continuous upgrading of large-scale submerged arc furnaces, the continuous breakthroughs in desulfurization and denitrification, and the recycling technology of waste heat power generation, which have been widely promoted and applied; in the polysilicon sector, the green and clean production of the whole path cycle has been promoted in the whole industry. Zhao Jiasheng, chairman of Silicon Branch of
China Nonferrous Metals Industry Association, said that silicon is an indispensable material for the development of new energy and new material industries, and China has established a complete and controllable supply chain of silicon industry chain. Driven by technological progress in various links, the cost of polysilicon in photovoltaic systems in China has dropped from about 30% in 2010 to about 5% in 2020, which strongly promotes the cost reduction of photovoltaic power generation and lays a foundation for the grid parity of photovoltaic power generation.