‘These results are significant as the prevailing proposition suggests that the quartz purity level required to make high purity silicon metal is over 99.5%,’ said P. Peter Pascali, President and CEO of PyroGenesis. ‘Purevap has proven that to no longer be the case. We have demonstrated that the process can produce quartz of a significantly lower purity level (97.5%) as feedstock, and still produce high purity silicon metal. The implications of this are enormous when considering the potential commercial applications of the process. Conceivably, we can now take a cheap and abundant low purity quartz feedstock and transform it into a high value end product.’

High Purity Quartz = >99.5%

Low Purity Quartz = <99.5%