Over 20 million tonnes of installed aluminium smelting capacity exists worldwide, with smelter energy consumption in the range 14-17 kWh/kg aluminium. In terms of the reduction cell technology itself, the lowest sustained energy consumption is just below 13DC kWh/kg, or 50 percent energy efficient. For 15 years Comalco Aluminium Ltd. in Australia has been engaged in developing and testing reduction cells that use a refractory hard cathode, composed of a TiB_2/carbon composite coating over a carbon cathode. This technology has the potential to reduce energy consumption significantly while simultaneously increasing the life of the cells, which is currently limited by wear rate of the conventional carbon cathodes used throughout the world.
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