Investigation of the Combustion of Silicon Particles in Air and their Reaction Products

To achieve climate neutrality, we will have to completely abandon coal as an energy source in the near future. Without coal-fired power plants, however, and if we want to avoid nuclear power at the same time, it will be difficult to guarantee the base load share of the national electricity supply. One conceivable alternative could be areplacement of coal by using metal particles as fuel. Metal particles could be burnt in a very similar technical process. Possibly even part of the infrastructure needed for this could be taken over from existing coal-fired power plants. Silicon offers itself as a particularly suitable carbon-free energy source. As the second most abundant element in the earth's crust, it is omnipresent, especially in the forms of stone. Ascombustion product, SiO2 should be produced again, which ideally can be reused, e.g., as raw material or construction material. Thus, like hydrogen, silicon fulfils the requirement for a universal energy carrier that it does not have to be collected again for recycling. Although silicon has long been used as a pyrotechnic fuel, its combustion and the nature of the resulting products have hardly been studied. This is especially true for the combustion of silicon dust with air.