Alcoa Corporation, Ball Corporation, and Unilever PLC are collaborating to enable the first use of breakthrough ELYSIS® carbon-free smelting technology in the production of aluminum for consumer personal and home care packaging. “Through this collaboration with Ball and Unilever, we’re helping bring low-carbon aluminum into everyday products and demonstrating how innovation at the material level […]
Alcoa Corporation achieved two strategically important developments for its Massena Operations in New York. First, the company signed a new 10-year energy contract with the New York Power Authority (NYPA). In addition, the company announced a capital investment of approximately $60 million in the facility’s anode baking furnace, a key component of the aluminum smelting process. […]
By Rose Eaton, Light Metal Age Aluminum is everywhere — your soda cans, airplane wings, smartphones, power lines, and even the foil wrapping your leftovers. It’s lightweight, corrosion-resistant, endlessly recyclable, and quietly underpins the modern world. But what if you found out that this silvery metal was once more valuable than gold? Or that Napoleon […]
By Alton Tabereaux, Contributing Editor. The U.S. was once ranked as one of the top primary aluminum producing countries in the world. It grew significantly thanks to the war efforts during World War I in the 1910s and through to the 1940s. Since 1940, there have been 28 different aluminum smelters built in the U.S., […]
By Peter Pollak, The Aluminum Association (Retired). Nikola Tesla, a Serbian American inventor and futurist, is considered to be one of the greatest electrical engineers of all time (Figure 1). Best known for harnessing alternating current (AC) for electrical transmission, Tesla was a true visionary, envisioning wireless transmission and communication technologies (now made reality in the […]
The International Aluminium Institute (IAI) reported on the progress of its Aluminium Industry Greenhouse Gas Initiative, which was launched at COP28 in December 2023. The initiative tracks and publicly reports the greenhouse gas reduction ambitions and progress of IAI member companies, encouraging further steps in the sector’s efforts to address climate change. The initiative is backed […]
Saudi Arabian Mining Company (Ma’aden) signed a non-binding agreement to acquire 20.62% share in Aluminium Bahrain (Alba), which operates one of the world’s largest single-site smelters in the Kingdom of Bahrain. The purchase is in line with Ma’aden’s continued growth plans, with the aim of expanding its business ten times by 2040, with its aluminum […]
Elysis, the technology partnership between Rio Tinto and Alcoa, plans to launch its first industrial-scale demonstration plant at the Arvida smelter complex in Québec, Canada. This investment will support the ongoing development of the breakthrough Elysis inert anode technology, which is said to eliminate all greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the traditional smelting process and […]
By Alton Tabereaux, Contributing Editor. Bauxite residue is an insoluble solid waste by-product generated after the digestion of gibbsitic bauxite ore with sodium hydroxide at elevated temperature and pressure in the Bayer process for the extraction of alumina. During the digestion process, aluminum minerals react with caustic soda process liquor to form soluble sodium aluminate […]
