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Thermal Technology turns up the heat on solar PV polysilicon furnaces
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When Matt Mede bought Thermal Technology last year, he had an idea for an application that "was perfect for the company's capabilities and know-how": the solar photovoltaic polysilicon furnace market. "It fits right in with the size of our systems, the type of heating, the atmospheric conditions, and the automation," says the company CEO/president. After a year of development work and about a million dollars in R&D outlay to perfect the technology and move forward with manufacturing, evidently Thermal Tech's first solar customer thinks so too.
The unnamed company recently signed a long-term deal with the Santa Rosa, CA-based equipment firm to supply more than 100 newly designed high-temperature vacuum furnaces for its solar silicon production efforts.
Mede is no stranger to the high-temperature side of the metallurgy and solar PV equipment businesses, having served as president of ALD Vacuum Technologies before acquiring Thermal Tech. The company itself has a pedigree stretching back to the 1940s via Richard D. Brew and Co. and to the 1960s via Astro Industries, the two firms that joined forces in 1984 to become Thermal Technology.
The company's proprietary resistance-heated vacuum furnaces (like the one pictured above) are known by some as "microfurnaces." They offer more of what Mede calls a "bottom-up, rather than top-down" approach to producing solar-grade silicon.
"Electronics-grade silicon has 8 or 9 Nines (99.9999999%) purity, but solar only needs 6 Nines," he explains. Since most poly comes from the higher-grade processes, a lower purity, lower cost yet robust silicon-furnace platform would have alot of potential appeal for the crystal growers and DSS tool purveyors in the PV market. That's the sweetspot that Thermal Tech hopes to capitalize on.
"Our tools are not so capital intensive, a company can just add units to add capacity," Mede says. "They can produce a fair amount of silicon per unit per day."
Each of Thermal Tech's furnaces has a throughput of about 100 kg per day and an annual production capability of about 15 metric tons, he says. They're "100% automated" and maintain a "fairly continuous flow" through the three process steps of feeding, reacting, and casting. The units are rated for 2000°C (silicon's melting point is 1400°C), which is "much higher than anything in the silicon world."
Although Mede can't say who his initial solar customer is, he did say the user will be manufacturing domestically in the U.S. and competes with the likes of REC, Tokuyama, MEMC, and Hemlock. A second customer will be kicking off its program next Monday. This company will be using a "slightly different thermal concept for a polysilicon furnace design," one that is not competitive with the model already being produced for the first customer.
Mede told me that the first solar furnace system will be rolling off the Santa Rosa production line in about five weeks. Since the 25,000-square-foot mothership facility can only handle about 50 tools per year (that's about one per employee, given the company's workforce of 50), Thermal Tech's second phase involves expanding to a bigger factory offshore, a project undertaken in conjunction with the company's partner, Inteco Group of Austria.
He wouldn't divulge the location of the new high-volume plant, other than to say it will be somewhere in Asia. The plan is to break ground in March of next year and finish up by June.
Although he says he's not aware of anyone taking a directly competitive approach to Thermal Tech's in the solar PV space, Mede admits that he doesn't "need to follow the market or market it because we already have a customer base and more to come. When you're a company like mine is, when you're growing and you're small, you have plenty of market to grab."
While some big capital equipment players are suffering through the burgeoning downturn, little guys like Thermal Technology, which have a good product and a welcoming market space, can smile all the way to the bank--as long as their financial institution hasn't shut its doors.
