Wednesday, Nov 03, 2004
Innovation is at the heart of the aluminium industry - for without advances in technology the sector would not have grown from a cottage industry in the late 19th century to the world's second largest metal market, behind steel.
However, the introduction of the latest wave of technology for the more efficiently production of aluminium - and at the same time reduce emissions - has become less certain in the past six months.
Alcoa, the world's leading producer of primary aluminum, fabricated aluminum, and alumina, is to give an update in the first quarter of next year about its work on "inert anode" technology, a process that experts say would represent a radical breakthrough, but one that has so far failed to meet expectations.
The traditional smelting process eats up a great deal of carbon, most of which eventually spirals up into the atmosphere as either carbon monoxide or dioxide. About 430 kilograms of carbon are needed to process just one tonne of aluminium metal, experts say.
The aluminium industry has been eager to develop a non-carbon anode, or positive electrode, that is not consumed by oxygen during electrolysis. Instead, it would actually release oxygen.
Pechiney, the French aluminium group taken over by Alcan of Canada last year, was among the few companies to sell its smelter technology to other producers.
Alcan's takover of Pechiney has, however, placed the roll-out of the French company's AP-50 technology on hold following the decision by the Canadian aluminium group to review its role in the proposed Dollars 2bn Coega aluminium smelter, near Port Elizabeth in South Africa.
Although Alcan has not pulled out of the project, it is due to make a decision at the end of the year.
Alcan claims to control 13 per cent of the world's aluminum production capacity. It mines bauxite (aluminum ore) and makes and recycles aluminum sheet, foil, wire and cable, and extrusions (doors, windows and vehicle parts).
Alcan's stance on Coega has delayed the project from its original scheduled opening in 2006. Coega was supposed to represent a showcase for the new technology by allowing the construction of bigger smelters.
Travis Engen, president and chief executive of Alcan, says that although Pechiney's technology has become something of an industry standard, it is healthy for a wide range of technologies to exist.
"The innovation that comes from competition is tremendously important", he says, as it keeps the research moving ahead.
Even if the project goes ahead, Alcan has said it might use AP30 technology rather than roll out AP50.
"We haven't reached a conclusion on what the next step is, there is a lot of momentum with AP50 but it is not yet 'ready to go' as the primary technology of a brand new smelter," says Mr Engen. But he hopes it will be used one day, as "a lot of investment has been put into it".
Coega was designed to produce 460,000 tonnes a year of aluminium, using a smaller number of larger pots in which alumina is combined with electricity to form aluminium. Pechiney executives boasted that the AP-50 technology reduced investment costs by 15 per cent to Dollars 3,400 a tonne or 15 per cent below the costs for smelters using the Pechiney designed AP-30 technology.
Many of these smelters were built in the past decade such as BHP Billiton's Hillside and Mozal plants in South Africa, Bahrain Aluminium's large Alba plant and Alcan's Alma smelter in Canada.
Alcoa has a significant interest in smelting technology after all. It was founded by Charles Martin Hall, one of the co-inventors of modern aluminium.
Alcoa, which has 120,000 employees in 41 countries, has been working for more than five years on "inert anode" technology which, if successful, would replace the short-lived carbon anode in smelters with one which would not be destroyed during the electrolytic process.
The fact that it is publicly known that Alcoa is working on this technology is owed to a 111-page report published in June 2000 by Thomas Ven Leeuwen, a metal analyst at Credit Suisse First Boston.
Mr Ven Leeuwen's report concluded that Alcoa was on the cusp of a commercial breakthrough.
Alcoa responded to the report, saying that assuming the technology proves to be feasible, "the company believes that it will be able to convert its existing potlines to this new technology, resulting in significant operating cost and capital investment savings".
Kevin Lowery, Alcoa spokesman said the company would make its position on "inert anode" clear next year.
"We continue to pursue technologies that reduce costs, boost productivity and one that is good for the environment," said Mr Lowery.
The research into inert anode is one of the nine significant projects that is funded by Alcoa's Dollars 200m a year research and development budget. But funding for the inert anode project is reported to expire over the next 12 months.
Alcoa has been working on new technologies for decades, and has suffered a few setbacks along the way. The company built an experimental smelter in Palestine, Texas, in the early 1980s to use a process known as "aluminium-chloride", which was touted at the time as an energy-saving technology. Alcoa closed the plant after only a few years because of problems with the process.
Inert anode technology all caught the attention of the US Department of Energy, DOE, which published an Inert Anode Roadmap in February 1998 where it formed a pact with the aluminium industry to develop inert anode by 2020.
The DOE claimed that if successful, inert anode technology would produce energy savings of up to 25 per cent, operating costs reductions of up to 10 per cent and productivity increases of up to 5 per cent over conventional carbon anode technology.
Other companies are also attempting to crack a solution with inert anodes. The Swiss-based Moltech Systems and Golden Northwest Aluminium, a US-based producer filed a chapter 11 reorganisation plan with a bankruptcy court in Portland, Oregon this year.
The founder of Moltech, Vittorio de Nora, recently wrote in a trade magazine Aluminium Process and Product technology, that no progress has been made in the US programme since the DOE's roadmap was published. However, Mr de Nora claimed that Moltech has developed an inertanode technology called "Veronica", which it hopes to lease to aluminium producers, but so far no deals have been concluded.
By KEVIN MORRISON
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