>>12618559I did the formulas myself, and used just raw sand from a local quarry as a resource. (went there with my bike and a backpack full of mason jars, climbed the fence and stole what is probably 3 euros worth of sand. im an idiot) Purifying wasnt hard, though a bit unpleasent at times, but its probably not more than 98% pure. Good enough for larger diodes, but i probably couldnt make solar panels from it.
What you do is clean the sand with HCl, wash it, then add NaOH, heat it to 500 C to make sodium silicate, which is water soluable. Then you filter everything else. this will take a while... Finaly you add H2SO4 to make silicic acid, which with the water will make silica gel, which you can filter out. Bake tah for a couple hours and youll get pure SiO2. Make a mixture of you pure SiO2 and aluminium powder, you can use sulfure as a catalyst (be carefull of deadly fumes if you use sulfur) Add Hcl to turn Al2O3 into AlCl3, filter one last time.
Thats the process i came up with, though im probably not the first.
