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Sustainable Primary Aluminium Production: Technology Status and Future Opportunities

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Abstract

Energy and greenhouse gas emission remain the major technological challenges to the aluminium production. Over the last few decades, aluminium industries have been aiming for higher production volumes through capacity creep in the existing smelters with reasonable additional investment. However, a strong focus on specific energy consumption has always been part of technology considerations, and this aspect is even more critical today from the point of view of long-term sustainability. Through research and innovations in design, control and operations of Hall–Héroult cell, modern smelters are achieving a benchmark performance as low as 13 kWh/kg of Al at commercial scale and 12 kWh/kg of Al at pilot scale. There is also significant research effort put on alternate technology platforms like drained cathode cell and inert anode. Although there are many pilot-scale demonstrations, many critical issues like operating cost and stability problems in drained cell and higher specific energy in inert anode need to be addressed for commercial consideration of these technologies. Industry 4.0 platform technologies like internet of things, cloud computing, machine learning and artificial intelligence, etc., are opening up further opportunities for benchmark performance to the modern smelters. Digital twin is such an emerging technology for predictive control and operation and will be a key driver for low-energy cells. Based on a discussion on the status of present technology, this article presents a comprehensive review of the technological progress of aluminium smelting and emerging new technology like Industry 4.0, towards reduction of energy and making aluminium production sustainable.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank their colleagues in HINDALCO and Aditya Birla Science & Technology Company Pvt Ltd. (ABSTCPL) for their contributions over decade-long research programs on sustainable aluminium production. Authors also thankfully acknowledge the collaboration with Prof Rajiv Shekhar, Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, on Drained Cathode Cell research Project. Finally, the authors would like to thank HINDALCO and ABSTCPL management for their support.

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  1. Aditya Birla Science and Technology Company Pvt Ltd, MIDC Taloja, Panvel, Maharashtra, 410208, India

    Amit Gupta & Biswajit Basu

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Correspondence to Amit Gupta.

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Gupta, A., Basu, B. Sustainable Primary Aluminium Production: Technology Status and Future Opportunities. Trans Indian Inst Met 72, 2135–2150 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12666-019-01699-9

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