The effects of melt viscosity on the enrichment and separation of Si crystals from Al–Si melt during an electromagnetic solidification process were investigated. Both the enrichment efficiency and the separation were found to be strongly dependent on the melt viscosity. A high melt viscosity was beneficial to the enrichment of primary silicon, whereas a low melt viscosity facilitated the separation process. A new enrichment mechanism was proposed in order to clarify the influence of melt viscosity, and an improved process for achieving high-efficiency enrichment of Si crystals via control of the melt viscosity was also proposed. Additionally, the morphology of Si crystals was found to change from spheroidal to plate-like in shape owing to the difference in viscosities in different regions.
Boron removal from metallurgical grade silicon （MG-Si） using a calcium silicate slag was studied. The results show that it is impossible basically to remove boron using a pure SiO2 refining. The oxidizing ability of CaO-SiO2 slag for boron removal was characterized by establishing the thermodynamic relationship between the distribution coefficient of boron （LB） and the activities of SiO2 and CaO. The experimental results show that the distribution coefficient and the removal efficiency of boron are greatly improved with the increase of CaO proportion in the slag. The maximal value of LB reaches 1.57 with a slag composition of 60%CaO-40%SiO2 （mass fraction）. The boron content in the refined silicon is reduced from 18×10^-6 to 1.8×10^-6 using slag refining at 1600 ℃ for 3 h with a CaO-SiO2/MG-Si ratio of 2.5, and the removal efficiency of boron reaches 90%.
The primary silicon crystals and AI-Si alloy in hypereutectic A1-Si melt were separated by electromagnetic stirring and directional solidification. Additionally, the distribution feature of impurities in A1-Si system was verified. The results show that the impurities are mainly located in A1-Si alloy and the grain boundaries between the A1-Si alloy and primary silicon. Furthermore, the morphology of primary silicon changes from fish-bone like to plate like and spheroid due to the different Si contents. The amount of impurities decreases with the increasing of Si content in different positions of the sample. The amount of impurities in the bottom of the sample is approximately 10× 10^-6, which is obviously improved compared with the 1248.47 × 10^- 6 in metallurgical Si.
The impurities Al,Ca,Ti,B,P etc in metallurgical grade silicon(MG-Si)can be effectively removed by refining using molten slag based CaO-SiO_2,and it is especially effective for boron removal.The experiments of boron removal were studied using CaO-SiO_2 binary slag in induction furnace.The results showed that the distribution coefficient of boron(L_B)between slag and silicon increased with more proportion of CaO/SiO_2(mass%).It was advantaged to boron removal for higher basicity of slag,so the boron in MG-Si was reduced from 18ppmw to 1.4ppmw with the addition of Li_2O and K_2O to CaO-SiO_2 slag.The proportion of SiO_2 in slag affected the oxidizing capacity of slag,which reduced the efficiency of boron removal.
Gas blowing is a valid method to remove the impurities from metallurgical grade silicon（MG-Si） melt.The thermodynamic behavior of impurities Fe,Al,Ca,Ti,Cu,C,B and P in MG-Si was studied in the process of O2 blowing.The removal efficiencies of impurities in MG-Si were investigated using O2 blowing in ladle.It is found that the removal efficiencies are higher than 90% for Ca and Al and nearly 50% for B and Ti.The morphology of inclusions was analyzed and the phases Al3Ni,NiSi2 and Al3Ni were confirmed in MG-Si by X-ray diffraction.It was found that SiB4 exists in Si？B binary system.The chemical composition of inclusions in MG-Si before and after refining was analyzed by SEM-EDS.It is found that the amount of white inclusion reduces for the removal of most Al and Ca in the forms of molten slag inclusion and the contents of Fe,Ni and Mn in inclusion increase for their inertia in silicon melt with O2 blowing.
