Hydro's New Karmoy Technology Pilot:Start-Up and Early Operation

摘要

After the successful development and operation of the 6 HAL4e test cells at the Ardal research Centre starting in 2008, Hydro decided in 2015 to build an industrial pilot plant. The site chosen is on Karmoy island in Norway, on the very same, cleaned site where the Karmoy Soderberg plant once operated. The 60-cells plant is called the Karmoy Technology Pilot, or KTP for short. The HAL4e cell development program's ambition included step improvements in energy consumption and environmental friendliness. These innovations span many aspects of cell technology, environment protection, infrastructure, and operation, like low cell resistivity, PAH-free linings, low-energy cell preheat and start-up, low specific energy consumption, low-anode effect rate and duration, low fluoride emissions, low CO_2 emissions, automated cell operations, and many more. This paper summarizes the preparation and start-up activities and also presents some operating results of the first two years of operation.