Novelis Inc. successfully tested the use of hydrogen fuel to power an industrial recycling furnace at its U.K. plant in Latchford, Warrington. The company believes this is a significant step toward carbon-neutral production.
“Exploring renewable energy sources, such as hydrogen, making first mover investments, and reducing energy intensity are part of our 3×30 vision to advance aluminium as the material of choice with circular solutions,” said Emilio Braghi, executive vice president, Novelis Inc., and president, Novelis Europe. “With the significant expansion of our local recycling capacity, we are transforming the Latchford site into a prototype for high-recycled content and decarbonized aluminum production.”
The Latchford Plant
Novelis Latchford is one of Europe’s largest used beverage cans recycling plants and Europe’s largest closed-loop recycling operation for automotive aluminum rolled products with an annual recycling capacity of up to 195,000 tonnes. The plant is an essential part of Novelis’ European production, which has enough capacity to recycle every aluminum beverage can sold in the U.K. It also collaborated with Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) to create the first closed-loop system in Europe.
As announced in July 2024, Novelis is investing approximately $90 million to double the recycling capacity for used beverage cans (UBCs) at its plant in Latchford. The project will increase the facility’s UBC recycling capacity by 85,000 tonnes per year, while also decreasing Novelis Europe’s annual carbon emissions by more than 350,000 tonnes. The expansion project is expected to begin commissioning in December 2026.
Testing Hydrogen
Along with using higher amounts of recycled content, decarbonization of the company’s melting processes and energy sources are important levers to delivering lower-carbon, highly sustainable aluminum solutions. Using hydrogen instead of the same amount of natural gas when operating a melting furnace has the potential to reduce CO2e emissions by up to 90%, which makes an interesting fuel for high temperature applications, such as aluminum recycling.
“The use of hydrogen is not common in the aluminum industry today and we are very proud to be one of the pioneers to have tested this new fuel at an industrial scale and in a real-world environment,” said Allan Sweeney, plant manager, Novelis Latchford. “The results from Latchford will drive further research into the potential deployment of hydrogen in our recycling operations worldwide.”
The hydrogen demonstration project carried out at Novelis Latchford was conducted in collaboration with Progressive Energy, an independent UK energy company. The project required the installation of new burners, regenerators, and furnace lining material.
With safety as the top priority of the hydrogen pilot project, a series of tests were conducted by blending different percentages of hydrogen with natural gas (30–100%) to evaluate the impact on existing infrastructure and equipment compatibility. During the trial campaign, several hundred tonnes of 3000 series scrap aluminum alloy were remelted and cast into sheet ingots. In addition, all relevant parameters were measured to assess any impact on the product, process, operating environment, and environmental emissions.
Further downstream processing, including rolling and finishing, will be now completed at other Novelis plants in Europe to establish the real “end-to-end” parameters of a hydrogen-based, recycled alloy production process. Following the full post-trial evaluation and assessments, a report will be released as part of the U.K. government’s Industrial Fuel Switching program later this year.
Supported with a grant of £4.6 million, as part of the £1 billion Net Zero Innovation Portfolio and the wider regional HyNet project, the Industrial Fuel Switching Competition program is designed to support industry to decarbonize their operations through a switch from natural gas to low carbon hydrogen. As the UK’s leading industrial decarbonization cluster, HyNet aims to decarbonize industries across the North West and North Wales through the production, transportation, and storage of low-carbon hydrogen, as well as by capturing industry’s carbon dioxide emissions through Carbon Capture Solutions. Novelis has been a partner in the HyNet project since 2017 and is supporting the development of the regional infrastructure project.
Novelis is also conducting its own technical feasibility studies into the use of hydrogen as a direct replacement for natural gas. More generally, the company’s research and development teams worldwide continue to investigate the possibility of using plasma and electricity to supply energy to its production plants.
Furthermore, as part of its new Novelis 3×30 vision, the company has set ambitious sustainability targets to achieve by the end of 2030, including increasing recycled content to 75% from today’s 63%, reducing carbon emissions to less than 3 t CO2e/t Al shipped, and continuing to lead the industry to circularity through first-mover investments. These are in addition to the company’s goal to be carbon neutral by 2050 or sooner.