Solarvalue AG | the next level company

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John Mott
Director of the test laboratory in the USA

Back in the 80s, John Mott was carrying out research into the production of solar grade silicon from metallurgical silicon for the Solarex Corporation in Gaithersburg, Maryland, USA. Even back at that time he was convinced that high-quality solar grade silicon could be produced with that technique. Therefore, he never stopped to pursue this idea and continued to do extensive work in the field of silicon metal and composite materials outside of the photovoltaic realm.

The process for generating solar grade silicon consists of three steps and at the end Solarvalue will produce silicon with an overall purity of 99.9998 %. Described in a nutshell, in the first step high purity quartz and high purity carbon are heated to a temperature of 2,200 degrees Celsius, reducing the quartz to silicon metal and achieving a purity of approximately 99.9+%. The second step is the first purification stage which involves multiple unidirectional solidifications in induction furnaces. The third step is a further purification of the silicon metal achieved by washing it with a high purity glass slag and, after removing the glass slag, performing a final unidirectional solidification to an optimized temperature profile.

“These processes are well known to the world and hardly a secret” says John Mott. “The art behind it all that allows it to be economically feasible is in what we call ‘the mere engineering details’, which are always what make or break a project. The preparation and operation of the arc furnace and the raw material mix fed to it are critical to the quality of the silicon metal produced. The construction details of the melting and freezing furnaces, enabling clean sealed operation and maximum conservation of heat, are equally critical to reaching the very low impurity levels required for making efficient solar cells.

For me, the best part of all this is the fact that we are making a piece of a product the value of which is indisputable. We are part of making something that can produce electricity in a harmless, non-intrusive, non-polluting manner Ð and do it for many years. In the crystalline solar cell world, no one really knows how long they can last. The oldest cells are over 35-40 years old already and still working. Back in the early 80’s, it took so much power to make a solar cell, that it was said that it would never generate enough power to recoup what it took to make it, that it would never last long enough! Today it takes only a small fraction of the electric power that was required in the 80’s, but we now know how long they can last. Where it once took infinity to recoup the power, in recent years the estimate has been 5 to 10 years, and now there is talk of just a couple of years. I’m proud to be a part of that. We are on the cusp of an energy paradigm shift that will certainly transform our world.

“Together we will achieve our goal to produce Ð in a quantity and at a low cost not yet achieved in the industry Ð solar grade silicon using the metallurgical process.”