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http://finance.yahoo.com/news/cost-break…-130000589.html

"An independent engineering evaluation of the Mayaterials process estimates that a commercial plant producing more than 40 tonnes/day would have a capital cost of approximately $24/kg and a variable cost of $5/kg. Ed Tomeo, President and CEO of the general partner for Wadham Energy LP, says, "Our understanding is that this represents a 70% reduction in capital and a 60% reduction in operating costs compared to conventional methods for producing ultra-pure polysilicon. This could be a game-changing technology for the industry, helping to drive down the costs of PV modules to well below $1.00/watt."

My own oppinion: Variable cost of 4/kg at 40 Tonn reactor only means that the raw goods material and all such variable costs would be at this price point at such a small reactor size. What about fixed costs? (article is silent about this) how about the fact that most of the producers ingot oven teqniques have taken a long time to develop to achive the wafer qualities they currently have and what would happen if they introduced this lower quality in the ingot process?

Quoted from "explo"

The 40 tonnes was per day, so the cost level was for a big plant scenario. $5 cash cost and $24 capex would mean half the cost of today's poly solutions, but with half the Ns purity. It sounds quite interesting, but I guess if there'll be a commercial plant resulting from this it is many years out.

Yes that is true so a 14000-15000 MT plant. But I dont think cash cost is only 5$. The article only specifies variable cost at 5$/kg. How about fixed cost that is still linked to production and not part of cappex?

Quoted from "larryvand"

With PV modules at 65c and costs at 52c, doesn't that mean that the article is outdated?

Article seems to be from november 2012 but yes that number is outdated.

I did some research there are other variable costs:http://www.scihub.org/AJSIR/PDF/2012/3/AJSIR-3-3-146-149.pdf
"The rice husk samples from different locations were washed with water to remove mud and soluble dirt. They were subsequently
leached in concentrated HCL at 80 oC for 2 hours and rinsed with distilled water. 100 grams of each sample
were pyrolysed at 1000oC in a muffle furnace for 3 hours. At this temperature, complete crystallisation of
the rice husk was expected. Though amorphous RHA has high surface area, gives better reactivity and high
purity silicon (7), for these reasons, amorphous RHA have been adapted as starting materials by most
workers (8) but here it is necessary to place RHA on the same footing with the natural crystalline quartz."

I think there is added cost to heat up (electricity) the rice ash.

"CONCLUSIONS
Silicon from the natural quartz, the standard industrial
practice, gave the same range of purity with silicon
from RHA. Thus relatively high purity RHA could be
used as substitute for the raw material for
metallurgical grade silicon in countries with low
deposits of high grade s"

Seems to be an substitute for MGS as the raw material for polysilicon. Interesting.

Also digged a bit more and there was patents about this in the 1970's example:
https://docs.google.com/a/google.com/vie…s/US4214920.pdf

I dont think variable costs include labour and electricity. For rec this is around 40 % of 11.5$/kg and the rice hull ash uses furneces that get high temperatures for 3 hours (1000-1900 celcius) so i assume there is also some electricity costs to heat up. I think therefore this uMGS is perhaps around 10$/kg cost.