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COMPANY NEWS W O R L DWI D E
Riedhammer’s baking furnace
technology selected by Rusal
Riedhammer has signed an agreement with
Rusal whereby the latter will use Riedhammer’s
open-top baking technology for its new
aluminium smelter located in the Taishet district
of the Irkutsk region. The anode baking
facility will be equipped with two state-of-theart
Riedhammer open top baking furnaces,
each of which will consist of 64 sections. To assure
themselves about Riedhammer’s furnace
technology a Rusal delegation visited anode
baking facilities in the UAE where Riedhammer
baking furnaces have been in full operation
for many years.
Aluminij Mostar orders
air-cooled ingot caster
Aluminij d.d. Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina,
has placed an order with Hertwich Engineering,
Austria, for the supply of a belttype
ingot casting line. The line comprises a
melting and casting furnace and an air-cooled
belt-type ingot caster. It has a design capacity
of 10 tonnes of ingots per hour with a unit
weight of 7 to 10 kg. The air-cooling system
ensures a high metallurgical quality. In addition,
it can efficiently cast high-silicon and
other eutectic and hypereutectic alloys. The
downstream equipment includes automated
stacking, packing and marking units. Commissioning
is scheduled for the first quarter
of 2013.
LTB receives order for fume treatment
plant from Century Aluminum Vlissingen
Antitrust: EU Commission renders legally
binding commitments from Rio Tinto Alcan
Rio Tinto Alcan has been ordered by the EU
Commission to end the practice of contractually
tying the licensing of its Aluminium Pechiney
(AP) smelting technology to the purchase of
handling equipment, namely pot tending assemblies
(PTAs) from its subsidiary ECL. PTAs
are specialty cranes used in aluminium smelters
for the handling of anodes. Rio Tinto Alcan
committed to modify its future technology
transfer agreements so as to enable licensees
of its AP technology to purchase PTAs from
any recommended supplier.
The commitments introduce an objective
and non-discriminatory process for selecting
qualified suppliers of PTAs. The company will
provide competing PTA suppliers with the
necessary technical specifications to ensure
that their equipment is capable of operating
in smelters using AP technologies. Compliance
with these commitments will be monitored by
an independent expert. After market testing
an initial commitments’ proposal in August
2012, the Commission concluded that the
final commitments offered by Rio Tinto Alcan
(which introduced several improvements in
response to some requests raised during the
market test) are suitable to address its competition
concerns.
Commission Vice-President Joaquín Almunia
commented: “Rio Tinto Alcan’s commitments
will open up the market for equipment used in
aluminium smelters. As a result, the customers
of aluminium technology and equipment will
have more choice.” If Rio Tinto Alcan were to
breach its commitments, the Commission could
impose a fine of up to 10% of the company’s
total turnover without having to prove a violation
of EU competition rules.
As part of Century Aluminum’s plan to restart
anode production at the Vlissingen plant
in The Netherlands, the company placed an
order with LTB to supply a fume treatment
system for the baking furnaces, which offers
the newest technology for lowest emission
values. The primary aluminium producer
supplies standard-grade, high-purity
and value-added products at a rated production
capacity of 785,000 tpy. The company
acquired the former Zalco anode manufacturing
plant in Vlissingen to ensure the supply
of anodes for their smelter in Grundartangi,
Iceland.
To improve the health and safety conditions,
a new fume treatment plant for the
baking furnaces was ordered from Luft- and
Thermotechnik Bayreuth, Germany (LTB).
The system’s technology consists of several
treatment stages. A combination of the proven
ROxiTherm regenerative thermal oxidiser and
the ‘Sulflex’ wet scrubber ensure lowest emission
values for volatile organic compounds
(PAH, HF and sulphur dioxide). Using three
ROxiTherm in parallel ensure a 100% redundancy.
The new system will result in significantly
lower emissions compared to existing
systems in Europe and the Netherlands.
LTB is a leading supplier of air pollution
control equipment serving the carbon anode
manufacturing within the aluminium industry.
Rio Tinto Alcan puts homogenising and
sawing line from Hertwich into operation
Hertwich Engineering, Austria, has handed
over the first expansion phase of a homogenising
and sawing line to aluminum producer
Rio Tinto Alcan in Hafnarfjörður, Iceland.
With this investment, Rio Tinto Alcan Iceland
will be able to produce top-quality billets.
When changing between standard and special
alloys with different holding times a special
furnace design ensures high flexibility and
throughput. The plant is designed for a production
capacity of 157,000 tpy of standard
alloys.
The supply package comprises a linear
ultrasonic inspection station (UT), a preparation
station for retrofitting a helical UT and
an upstream billet saw including specific scrap
removal. Other supply items are an electrically
heated continuous homogenising furnace,
cooling station as well as a downstream
packaging station. A robot is used for the first
time to assemble the strapping machine with
wooden planks which are placed in deposits
for an entire shift are then transferred from
the robot to the strapping machine. Consequently,
the strapping device operates fully
automatically over the entire shift.
Step 2 of the expansion project is scheduled
to be commissioned in 2014.
■
The Author
The author, Dipl.-Ing. R. P. Pawlek is founder
of TS+C, Technical Info Services and Consulting,
Sierre (Switzerland), a service for the
primary aluminium industry. He is also the
publisher of the standard works Alumina
Refineries and Producers of the World and
Primary Aluminium Smelters and Producers of
the World. These reference works are continually
updated, and contain useful technical
and economic information on all alumina refineries
and primary aluminum smelters of the
world. They are available as loose-leaf files
and / or CD-ROMs from Beuth-Verlag GmbH
in Berlin.
68 ALUMINIUM · 3/2013