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Note: Increasing cell current is as central to aluminium smelter development as ever, in tandem with cutting greenhouse gas emissions and improving specific energy consumption. Richard Barrett asks some leading smelter technology providers and users to discuss their progress and look ahead.
"Our whole effort has been on driving emissions down. We started in 1990 and it has taken a big effort to improve efficiency around the process and reduce emissions," says Moustapha Mbaye, vice-president of Technology, Innovation and Centre of Excellence for Alcoa Global Primary Products.
Alcoa achieved a 36% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions over the period 1990-2008 and, given additional smelting capacity curtailment last year, achieved a 43% reduction, since 1990, by the end of 2009.
One of the biggest initiatives on the path to those improvements was the company's "one million tonne challenge", which started
in 2005. It set the goal of reducing Alcoa's global annual greenhouse gas emissions by 1m tpy year-on-year.
The Global Primary Products division has been developing the technologies and procedures needed to...