Recycling of Atmospheric Argon from Ingot-Furnaces for Photovoltaic Polysilicon Production

A novel technique was developed to recycle online the atmospheric argon from 10 parallel-connected Si-ingot furnaces in production line of photovoltaic polysilicon.The self-developed argon recycling system comprised the dry-screw vacuum pump,nonvolatile getter materials,compressors,heaters,filters,gas-line path,electromagnetic valves,storage tanks,automatic control and water-cooling units.The test results show that the lab-designed purifier of the recycling system was capable of increasing the purity of recycled argon from 99.9% to 99.9999% after effective removal of the pollutants,including,but not limited to SiO₂-dust,CO,SiO,O₂,N₂,H₂O,CO₂ and H₂.We suggest that the home-built recycling system be of much economic impact because of less waste of Ar,lower production cost and greater environmental friendliness in solar energy utilization industry.