Silicon carbide (SiC) is widely employed as an abrasive material in aqueous media for sawing silicon ingot into individual wafers in photovoltaic industry. After a series of cutting, grinding and polishing operation, a mixture of substances (Cutting fluid, SiC, Si and small amount of magnetic metal) is produced as a form of slurry. The used SiC can be preferably recovered and reused for another application, rather than disposed of as waste. In this study, a pilot scale system (25 kg/h) is developed to extract SiC from photovoltaic industry abrasive slurry. The recovery system is composed of physical and chemical separation processes to remove silicon particles and magnetic materials which are dispersed in the slurry. X-ray diffraction analysis showed that purified powder is in the 6H-SiC structure and powder consists only of silicon carbide and has no residual silicon. It might be applied again in silicon ingot cutting or for other purposes which require this kind of ceramic material.
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