Aluminum: Reducing chloride emissions from aluminum production

摘要

Reynolds Metals Company (RMC), with assistance from a NICE(sup 3) grant, is developing for commercialization a closed-loop control process that greatly reduces chlorine emissions and increases plant efficiency while maintaining metal quality. The process still utilizes chlorine to remove impurities during aluminum processing, but is more effective than current methods. With the new technology chlorine in the stack is monitored and input chlorine is adjusted continuously. This optimization of chlorine use results in substantially less waste because less chlorine has to be bought or produced by aluminum manufacturers. This innovation is a significant improvement over conventional aluminum treatments, in which chlorine is injected in a more costly and wasteful manner. By the year 2010, the new technology has the potential to reduce the energy it takes to create chlorine by 8.4 billion Btu per year and to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 1,377 tons per year.