Rekindle 2003

Chapter 695 When the cheater really cheats

PVC (polyvinyl chloride) and cement are two indispensable materials in infrastructure projects. The former is the material for most pipes, and the latter is the cornerstone of modern architecture.

These two things have nothing to do with high technology, but they are by-products of the process of starting from the chlorine chemical industry and moving towards polysilicon.

The first products produced by the chlorine chemical route are polyvinyl chloride, or PVC for short.

The second batch of products going down is a mixture composed of tricalcium silicate, dicalcium silicate, and tricalcium aluminate. After adding gypsum and some auxiliary materials, it is Portland cement.

More importantly, cement and PVC will not incur the pressure of national macro-control.

Looking back from today in 2003, the next ten or so years will be an era of civil engineering and infrastructure construction, and the amount of consumption will be overwhelming.

Moreover, the Portland cement produced by this process is more durable, corrosion-resistant and low-temperature resistant than ordinary cement. Even if the cement needs to clean up its backward production capacity, it will not fall on Qingyun.

However, looking forward to 2003, the past five years have been the most difficult period for China's economy.

Even at this point in time, it is a period of macroeconomic control to clear out backward production capacity. The entire society is compressing infrastructure. This is the essence of Sun Hongbing's downfall.

I don’t understand, I don’t understand at all.

Emperor Yun's destiny.

In other words, the profits from the output of these two items can actually cover the cost of making polysilicon. If not, there will be a surplus.

But, not bad.

Who said that for him, the above two are by-products...

It is not without reason that these four major subjects, organic chemistry, inorganic chemistry, physical chemistry, and analytical chemistry, are called nightmare subjects for majors such as chemistry, pharmacy, materials science, and biology.

But when it comes to breaking away from the times and coming up with an original solution...

Therefore, it is most convenient for Qin Manman to write this report. All the data can be obtained from her second uncle.

Not only Qin Manman was dizzy after hearing this, but the eyes of several others were shining with helplessness at this time.

It can only be said that Qing Yun is a bad guy. He doesn't need to think carefully when doing this kind of thing. When the time comes, he will just drive wildly without any hesitation.

Therefore, most people now cannot see the trend of infrastructure madness in the future, or dare not be sure of this trend.

Even Su Caiwei, who had the highest academic level, was listening to a book from heaven.

Although he is not going to enter the real estate industry, he is going to earn this money with tears.

It's okay to say that I have some understanding of this route. After all, it is a part of the semiconductor industry chain. If you look at scientific research reports, papers, etc., you will be able to understand it more or less.

No one would believe it if I told you.

As a professor of physics and chemistry, it was not easy for Qing Yun to fool these novices in this field who could only have a clear and stupid light in their eyes.

As for the by-products after silicon trichloride, steam can be used to generate electricity and be recycled directly in the production line. For some of the subsequent products, Qin Manman's second uncle Qin Tianshan's circular economy has already made some good application scenarios.

After a brief blow to several goddesses, Emperor Yun achieved his goal.

Assume that others buy 1000 yuan of industrial silicon for use, and Qingyun makes his own industrial silicon of the same price for his own use, which will definitely produce at least 3000 yuan of PVC and cement.

Qing Yun knows how to deal with the remaining by-products and energy consumption issues, but he can't write them down now.

After all, this is the realm of physical chemistry.

No way, chemistry...

A discipline that turns decay into magic.

She has two degrees in mathematics and computer science, but no chemistry.

"But Erbo's route has not yet solved the purity problem of polysilicon. With the method they are currently researching, the polysilicon that comes out in the end is only solar grade. It can only be used for photovoltaic panels and cannot be made into monocrystalline silicon."

How to solve the current problem of low polycrystalline silicon purity...

Unfortunately, this is Yun Di's specialty.

He dared to say that he was the most knowledgeable person in the world at this time, bar none.

High-purity polysilicon and even monocrystalline silicon are not available in China.

On the contrary, under the leadership of Mr. Lin Lanying and countless older generation scientists, China successfully produced single crystal silicon in 1958. In 1962, China successfully produced the first dislocation-free single crystal silicon, which was unprecedented in the world. It is also very advanced.

The original Jinmen Semiconductor, Emei Semiconductor, Luoyang China Silicon, and Huashan Semiconductor relied on this development. In China in the 60s, the number of manufacturers peaked at more than 20.

However, this is a production line serving military-grade products.

Due to various reasons, the technology cannot be iterated, resulting in the process always staying in the 50s. The production technology is difficult, the scale is small, the quality is low, the pollution is high, and the energy consumption is high...

To put it simply, even with an import price of hundreds of thousands of dollars, there is no cost advantage.

So after entering the reform and opening up, in addition to the military industry system, domestic silicon factories one by one stopped production and switched production one after another.

By the beginning of the century, the domestic production rate of this raw material in the civilian market was 0.

And when did the silicon industry in Qing Yun's previous life, which was so powerful in the international arena and convert 50 U.S. dollars per ton of polysilicon into 6 Chinese national currency, emerge?

Solar-grade polysilicon began to rise at this moment, and was detonated by Shi Zhengrong, Yang Huaijin and others in 2005. However, electronic industrial-grade polysilicon had to wait until after 2010 before domestic mass production was achieved due to technological breakthroughs, and it was only realized in 2015. Specifications are up to standard.

From the solar level to the electronic level, there was a gap of twelve years.

why?
Three reasons.

First, solar energy level is too profitable.

The superficial difference between solar grade and electronic industrial grade is only in purity, but there is a huge difference in the preparation route.

Therefore, the requirements for equipment are not of the same order of magnitude.

But the real reason lies not in craftsmanship but in the market. Since 97, America's solar roof plan has ignited the world's photovoltaic market. This market has continued to grow exponentially due to the promotion of environmental protection and other concepts, and the supply of products has seriously exceeded demand.

Producing simple solar-grade polysilicon can already make a lot of money. Without policy guidance, private capital naturally lacks the motivation to transform into electronic industrial grade.

Second, the solar level is too simple.

The drawing of single crystal silicon places high demands on technical personnel, and can even be said to be very high.

And the domestic talent pool... can be said to have been completely lost in the wave of closures after the reopening.

There were not many professionals on the market at that time.

In Emei Semiconductor, Luoyang China Silicon, and Huashan Semiconductor, the third oldest factories that were retained after the suspension of production and conversion, ordinary operators who had only worked for one year could suddenly become technical directors in the solar-grade polysilicon factories in Zhijiang. And technicians with a few years of experience are even more valuable treasures that every boss relies on.

The high technical barriers to talent made it impossible to cultivate talents, which made monocrystalline silicon unaffordable to market players at the time.

What's more, the process of monocrystalline silicon is very complex, and the speed and dimensions during the growth process must be stable. Therefore, the monocrystalline furnace must have precise and stable upper and lower parts operation, rotation control systems and automatic temperature adjustment systems...

Its equipment, energy consumption, labor, raw materials, auxiliary materials... in total, compared with the only solar-grade polysilicon, it is not an order of magnitude at all. This has led to the monocrystalline silicon in China in the first decade of this century. , no one wants to do it at all.

Since no one is willing to do monocrystalline silicon, then naturally no one will do it as its front-end product, electronic grade polycrystalline silicon.

To make matters worse, the myth of Shi Zhengrong's sudden wealth in photovoltaics brought unimaginable incentives to the entire industry and even the industrial upgrading of the entire country, but it also hindered the development of electronic-grade polysilicon.

In the past, industrial manufacturing was based on manual assembly line installation and manufacturing and machine tool processing. The real concept of industrialized processes began when private enterprises entered the photovoltaic industry.

Photovoltaics allows private enterprises to understand terms such as purification workshops, process cooling water, temperature zone control, material processing, crystal arrangement, etc. that only professionals will use and consider. This industry allows us to have a transitional board from the simple mechanical processing industry to the semiconductor industry. There are also new breakthroughs in industrial upgrading, and entrepreneurs in the entire society are studying this concept in depth.

With the fluctuation of foreign market policy subsidies and currency interest rate differences, the industry has the characteristics of short investment profit return cycle and high returns. At that time, a few people jointly managed to recover the cost in three months or even one month. At the same time, due to the opaque technology and loose environmental protection requirements Such conditions have led to a surge in the number of photovoltaic industrial parks.

There are too many players pouring into the entire industry chain.

Of course, what followed was oversupply and polysilicon prices plummeting, from US$50 per ton to RMB6 per ton. This brutal price war left no winner in the market.

This further squeezes out the living space of later-stage monocrystalline silicon.

Third, the electronic level does not make money.

Because of the brittleness of electronic-grade silicon materials, the freight is quite high. In those days, cars had to be used instead of trucks to transport the materials from the Emei Semiconductor Factory.

The development of China's semiconductor industry lags behind. As a result, China's electronic-grade polysilicon has no local sales due to the price war between international giants. If it wants to be sold overseas, it is simply impossible to realize the freight value that is almost equal to the cost of the material.

The above three reasons, in the final analysis, are actually the market, that is, there is no local semiconductor market to support the production of upstream raw materials.

However, the root of these three problems goes one step further and returns to the craftsmanship.

There is no market - the process cannot be iterated - there is no market
This forms a perfect closed loop frame.

Everything about energy consumption is nonsense. It is because of backward process technology that the yield rate of China's electronic-grade polysilicon is too low, the cost is too high, and it has no advantage to the outside world.

Otherwise, how could it be that China loses money when shipped out, while foreign goods make money when shipped in?

The main process for preparing polysilicon is called the modified Siemens method, which is the most common and mature method at home and abroad. In 2020, the proportion of polysilicon produced in the world using the improved Siemens method will be as high as 97.8%
The improved Siemens method has a history of more than 1955 years since its invention in 60. By the time Qingyun was reborn, industry participants have continuously optimized and improved the technology of the Siemens method. It has gone through three major versions and a dozen minor versions. iterate.

Unfortunately, at the beginning of the century, China's improved Siemens method was still in the optimization stage of the first generation and could not compete with the second generation of advanced foreign production capabilities at that time.

Fortunately for this time and space, Qing Yun, as a water professor majoring in physics and chemistry, mastered the third generation improved Siemens method of the entire chlorine chemical system.

There is no way, compared to others, he has unique conditions.

The world's largest polysilicon production base is in Leshan, Xishu.

The world's three leading polysilicon companies, No. 1 Tongwei and No. 3 Dongfang Houpu, are companies in Xishu, while half of the second-ranked GCL's production capacity is also in Leshan.

Because Leshan is known as the Whampoa Military Academy of China's silicon industry. It not only has the silicon industry foundation accumulated during the third-line construction period, but also has the world's largest silicon material reserves. It also has the most complete chemical industry system in China. It produces 100% of silicon every year. One-third of the world’s polysilicon.

In the previous life, although Qing Yun was driven to the university by Qin Tianchuan, he still had a passion for it. He wanted to conduct research on the silicon industry, and Oriental Magnolia alone was at his disposal at any time.

Originally, Qin Tianchuan's purpose of doing this was just to make him, as a university professor, worthy of Qin Manman's status as a mathematician. This naturally opened the door to this kind of thing.

What Qing Yun has to do now is to reproduce the papers that he has written over the years from PhD to professor in a reasonable way.

Once the reproduction is successful, it will be a crushing blow to the entire foreign semiconductor raw material industry.

The simplest comparison is that he can immediately increase the investment cost of polysilicon production lines from the current US$2 million per thousand tons to RMB 0.7 million per thousand tons.

The material of the reduction furnace has jumped directly from quartz glass to stainless steel for countless generations, because at this moment, only he knows how to change the formula so that stainless steel can also be used as a reduction furnace;
While the change in materials makes the internal space of the single furnace larger, and by rebuilding the space structure, he can directly increase the number of internal rods from 3 pairs to 48 pairs;
The change brought about is that the annual output of a single furnace is directly increased from 80 tons to 800 tons.

The tenfold increase in output is focused on dimensionality reduction.

At this moment, Emperor Yun felt very happy.

This is his specialty!
This is what he accumulated in his previous life and half of his life!

However, Xiao Ya next to her frowned.

Qin Manman could understand the necessity and importance of raw materials, but she couldn't understand it, so she asked, "Little fart... uh..."

The girls were stunned, and then they all laughed wildly.

"Little brat? Hahahaha!"

Facing the constipated look on Emperor Yun's face, Xiao Ya blinked her eyes and said she was sorry, but it was easy to say that she had forgotten the time.

It was never intentional.

Seeing the kid's face getting darker and darker, Xiao Ya quickly asked, "Xiao Qing, why are you so concerned about the semiconductor raw material industry?"

……

(End of this chapter)