Aluminium producer succeeds on the soda ash market

摘要

Russian Aluminium is a big supplier of raw material to glassmakers and uses a Russian production method. All soda ash produced in Russia is synthetic. More than half of it is obtained using the Solvay ammonia process, but one of the most modern soda producing technologies was developed in Russia. It is a hydrochemical method to obtain soda from limestone and nepheline aluminium ores and was developed by the All Russian Institute of Aluminium and Magnesium in the 1960s to achieve complex and wasteless processing. During this processing several products are extracted; soda ash, alumina, potassium sulphate, and potash. The biggest factory to produce soda using this method in Russia is Achinsk Alumina Refinery (Achinsk), the second largest soda producer in the country after Sterlitamak. According to the Russian rating agency "Expert-RA", in 2001 Achinsk's output equaled 21.3 percent of the total soda production in Russia.