Planning of intensified production of solar grade silicon to yield solar panels involving behavior of population

• Published in: Chemical engineering and processing 2021-04, Vol.161, p.108241, Article 108241
• Main Authors: Villicaña-García, Esbeydi, Ramírez-Márquez, César, Segovia-Hernández, Juan Gabriel, Ponce-Ortega, José María
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Economic incentives; Intensified silicon production process; Matching law; Solar grade silicon; Solar panels; Strategic planning
• ISSN: 0255-2701; 1873-3204
• DOI: 10.1016/j.cep.2020.108241

[Display omitted] •The use of solar panels is promoted by economically encouraging the stakeholders.•Intensified processes for silicon production have been optimized.•The entire supply chain has been optimized.•Matching law has been incorporated to incentive the involved parts. The need to use clean sources for producing electricity has been a great topic of discussion in recent years. Many countries have begun to take advantage of solar energy through the production of solar panels for electric power generation. In addition, knowing people's preferences allows predicting their behavior to propose better planning at macroscopic level. This work presents a mathematical programming model to address the conduct of people. The objective is to know their inclinations using the matching law, which involves the actions of users through different scenarios considering economic incentives and punishments. It includes a strategic planning of the production and distribution of solar grade silicon that is used for the construction of solar panels to meet the demands of electricity in residential sector of Mexico as a case study. Process intensification was used to enhance different ways to obtain solar grade silicon such as an Intensified Fluidized Bed Reactor and a hybrid, which is a combination of Siemens and conventional FBR processes. Also, the Siemens process was considered the most common process to produce silicon. Results show that the difference between the analyzed scenarios lies in the behavior of people while profit maintains constant.