Emissions-Free Aluminium: Which Technologies are Changing Everything
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 16 พ.ค. 2024
- Aluminium is a lightweight metal with a tonne of different uses: from aircraft, to buildings, to drink cans. And most important from my perspective is that it’s used in a number of technologies related to the energy transition. These include: electricity networks, battery packs, solar power and electric vehicle chassis. Demand for these technologies is projected to increase enormously over the coming decades, and aluminium production will have to increase along with it. Unfortunately, aluminium production is also responsible for more than a gigaton of CO2 globally in 2021, nearly 3% of total global emissions.
Since we’re going to need aluminium as a part of the transition, we can’t exactly stop producing it. That means we need to find ways of producing it without the CO2. Fortunately, engineers are figuring out ways of doing just that, and in this video I’ll explore what technologies we’ll use to eliminate emissions from aluminium production.
Bookmarks:
00:00 Intro
00:51 Aluminium vs Aluminum
01:14 Alumina Refining Process
03:41 Aluminium Recycling
05:11 Demand for Aluminium
05:31 Electricity Usage in Aluminium Production
07:53 Smelter Technologies
09:37 Anode Technologies
10:49 Refinery Technologies
11:37 Outro
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David Hodgson: writing, research
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I did some contracting work recently for an aluminium recycling plant where they wanted to take recycling one step further. The idea was to use LIBS (Laser induced breakdown spectroscopy) to determine the alloy of recycled material and thus be able to sort it in-line. The added value is that it can then be sold to smelters as a single alloy instead of a mixture. The technique was sound. Unfortunately for other non-technical reasons the project has never become operational.
This should be patented as soon as possible; the technology is too promising to give up on
@@gabedarrett1301or maybe open sourced so we all have access to this and other important tech?
What were those other non-technical reasons?
@petertrypsteen Management decisions. Financial mainly. But other reasons as well.
Awesome video. Simply stating that it can be done in a way that voters understand is half the job. Suddenly the polluters are obliged to stop polluting or lose their community status. Your move Tomago.
Thanks, Rosie. I'm probably a freak, but these type of videos, your original style of content, are by far my favourite. You're an excellent communicator of a concept, idea or technology.
PERFECT timing! Just what I needed for some renewables sceptics claiming "renewables can't mine or smelt for more renewables." A recent episode of Fully Charged took care of the mining - you're taking care of the aluminium side of smelting. Awesome work! I've popped it on my blog.
I love these topics. We use the variability in power demand in Quebec pretty extensively: if there’s a short demand spike we can ask the smelters to turn down the heat for a few hours; if there’s a cold snap in the forecast they can just take a few pots out of production for the week.
One thing I’d like to hear is what other industries (beyond Al smelters) can have this kind of variable demand, to use very cheap power. That seems to be the grid we’re headed for: lots of excess power most of the time, with some months a bit more lean and some days or hours very tight. Variable demand seems like a great alternative to batteries for those leaner periods.
One other important point is that products need to be required to be made to last as long as possible. No more low quality garbage that gets tossed out. Recycling may be better than refining new aluminum, but keeping the original piece of equipment made of aluminum instead of throwing it away at the scrapper’s is infinitely more efficient.
This is great. These are the areas that we need to target. The knock on effects are enormous.
Security of supply and then the price stability that follows would a great benefit to all. It would perhaps be a guide to other industries on how to tackle these problems and get into a proper circular economy.
Great video as usual, thanks for expanding on the lesser known sources of emissions.
Yeah, but then she says really dumb stuff like the net-zero economy.
If it ever happens, it is highly unlikely anyone alive today will live to see it.
Solar and wind are pretty good at producing a marginal watt. But they really cannot be baseload. The output of solar is zero at night time and terrible when it is cloudy or it is winter time. During the winter large parts of the day are pretty unproductive and the day is much shorter. Lots of cloudy days too during winter.
I love how in open defiance of Ms. Barnes's clear and explicit instructions, a good 20% of this thread concerns the "correct" spelling and pronunciation of element 13.
Thanks. I really didn't understand how the energy use was divided up among the different steps of production. Aluminum is so common and so useful it's taken for granted. It's good that there are so many people working on improving the production process. I'm glad we have someone like you to help us keep up with all this stuff.
Hi Rosie. Great channel. In the bayer process, bauxite digestion temp is between about 150 and 200C(depending on the type of bauxite) and the Al2O3.3H2O precipitation circuit runs at about 75C.
Amazing video. I'm familiar with this stuff and I'm very impressed with how clear and complete you manage to present it, in such a short time!
Great and systematic overview.
In wonder if the heat for the alumina refining could not come from mirror-concentrated solar as well.
Great job. I hadn't heard about the tunable smelters before, that's a tremendous help.
The shot transition with the aluminium stamp was a nice touch
Great video Rosie. You may be interested to look at the CF4 emissions from Aluminium and Rare Earth smelting. CF4, to state the obvious, has a huge GWP, so you don't need to make much for it to be an issue. Fluoride impurities in the ores react with the carbon electrodes to form CF4.
Concentrated solar power could be useful for two parts of the purification process; 1) Electrical energy generation and/or 2) Elevated temperatures that could be supplied to the first stage of purification. Maybe?
Replacing aluminum or steel with basalt or wood fiber in composites can be a good way to cut fossil trade emissions. Both materials increase direct air drawdown, too: wood fiber sequesters carbon drawn down by trees; byproduct basalt fines absorb CO2 by weathering.
Wonderful! 100% content, no filler. YT the way it should be done! Thank you from Quebec!
Wonderful information once again Rosie. Thank you.
I believe that there are chloro fluoro carbons linked emissions at the electrodes. How significant are they as compared to the overall emissions?
I think these can be mostly eliminated by more careful running of the electrolysis cells (which also results in better production efficiency). I think it also depends on the mix of impurities in the alumina. IIRC it's mostly older and/or badly run smelters with poor process control which have this problem, but it can be significant (since PFCs are potent greenhouse gases).
Also, cryolite doesn’t contain any chlorine, so CFC synthesis and emissions aren’t really an issue. From what I’ve read, part of the digestion and purification process removes chlorine from the bauxite by washing to remove soluble salts - a pretty easy and sure way to achieve high purity aluminium oxide feedstock.
Excellent update, good to have background on the whole aluminium process.
This is why it is vital to recycle it. Governments need to encourage more
Good video, very clear and precise.
EXCELLENT presentation!
Your enthusiasm for future technology is infectious. I hope I live long enough to see these go online.
Though, I do have doubts about one thing... China, ok two, India...
Fascinating. Loads of Information.
I really admire how you keep a straight face when you show O2 bubbling off a 920C pot of molten aluminum :)
It would be interesting to see how the inert anodes would work.
Awesome detail!
Many thanks Rosie for your very informative channel and charming presentation. I am happy to subscribe.
Great vid. Would love to hear about the new Anorthosite processes for Aluminum.
Carbon capture is a scam, but it will make some people very rich.
Thank you for the very interesting video!
Thx for the great info. Question: what advantages could be gained by upgrading hydro generators with new tech developed by EV motor manufacturing? It appears that there's a large delta between the two.
I think I've remembered correctly that high voltage transmission lines are made out of aluminium too. So, aluminium is needed to deliver the electricity to the smelter to make aluminium to make the cables to deliver the electricity to make the aluminium.........
Brilliant explainer video ... could be a huge win-win-win and most of the incentives seem to be aligned to get it done 😁
Fantastic video, thanks!
I am french and found your prononciation very good 👍. Thanks for your video. I learnt a lot again
Hi Rosie not quite correct for the Alumina refinery… For a high temp plant you need about 400 deg C plus high pressure to dissolve the alumina into the caustic soda…. I still think SMR would do the job nicely
Another very informative video! Thanks. I'm wondering what recycling aluminum entails in terms of equipment and energy use. It would be great if a wind or solar project could completely decouple from the grid and make aluminum ingots at a profit, and not have to deal with utilities.
I love your first question, it would be great to see someone like @EngineeringwithRosie do a comparison.
I don't like your second question much - surely it's much better for the refiner to have the added backup capacity of a geographically wide grid, and better for the grid to have controllable demand.
It takes about 5% of the energy to remelt aluminium than it does to smelt it from ore.
Why would that be great? A big consumer that can vary its demand is vety useful in a grid.
Very neat! I was half expecting you to look into the carbochlorination process, but I guess that's a little too niche and not ready for production yet.
Great job on this video you answered all my questions especially about recycling of aluminum it looks really hopeful for zero emissions aluminum just hope they follow through
I remember before beer came in cans in Europe and you would get 10c per can in the US.
Recycling is the most ecological way
These are some really great advances for such an important metal.
Australia has so many value chain opportunities. Cheap, even if variable, energy will be the key to unlock those.
Awesome video!
Excellent work. 😊😊😊😊
What was the energy needed in the recycling of aluminium cans?
15MWh, for 1 tonne to smelt the original.
Less than 1 MWh. The ratio is about 20:1 (recycled to virgin metal)
@@Lozzie74 thank you 😊
Whenever I hear about big industry needing really big temperatures for some of the processes, I wonder how much of that heat gets recycled.
I assume the end products of each process need to cool down afterwards, and I guess either the heat could de pumped back to the furnaces or used to boil some water to move a turbine.
As a chemist, I ask my self, do inert anodes not use much more power, as no Carbon is "burned" in the process? And second, why is no concentrated solar used as heat source? Hydrogen is soo inefficient as a heat source... As always great video and very interesting.:)
Primary production will always be needed. For structural applications, such as airplane wing spars virgin aluminum is required because the final alloy used must be carefully controlled to ensure the structure is strong enough. You really don't want your airplane wings falling off.
Thank you for the encouraging news about aluminium.
Thanks for the video. Maybe do the next one on Magnesium metal as without Mg Aluminium use would be much less.
A lot of information very well and very clearly presented. Good job! Now that I know how well aluminium is recycled, I guess it's time to switched from bottled beer to, gulp, beer in cans.
Very interesting, thanks.
I work for an international aerospace company; we are allowed either spelling of aluminiumiumium, and can say "turbine" any way we please.
Are there ever fights over it?
Great video and such great looks.. You're doin gooood, my friend.. Ha
It'd be great if you mentioned what the inert electrodes were made of...
A huge potential source of cheap hydro power is still untapped: Grand Inga at the Congo river, the potentially largest single hydro power station, twice as powerful as the Three Gorges-dam in China. It could have 35GW and provide 250TWh per year, sufficient to power an insane amount of aluminium smelters.
Very interesting and good explanation! I was just wondering why inert anodes are not in use yet? Does the upfront cost not cancel out the degradation of the carbon anodes?
It's relatively new, the patents haven't expired yet.
I suppose carbon is also rather cheap, and it's oxidation might also result in lower voltage across the cell,
In addition to adoption taking time and money for existing plants, or not making economic sense for some plant operators.
Concerning carbon electrodes, I wonder: can't we simply use biomass based electrodes to make them not be a net source of emissions? I.e, charcoal based on agricultural byproducts?
@@nos9784 Biomass would need to be processed a lot to get electrolysis-grade carbon. Trying to use biomass seems a really bad idea.
@@johnbash-on-ger why, though?
Charcoal was only replaced by coke in metallurgy when the forrests got depleted.
Isn't good charcoal clean enough as a feedstock?
Does this infinite recycling work for just pure aluminum, or also for it's alloys? We use drastically different alloys for different things from machining, to casting and stamping, and I do not see how you could reuse them without knowing the exact composition of every aluminum object recycled?
just add the ingredients and bake in your easy-bake oven.. like we do with iron/steel, base material is easier on the environment im sure.
Great video, exciting topic!
EnPot's active temperature control scheme seems like a game changer for smelters and grid stability.
Probably not that useful for very remote smelters that practically have their own grid.
I'd like to get a good look at the Enpot system, hopefully I can arrange a tour some day. It hasn't been as enthusiastically adopted by industry as I might have thought, though.
It's interesting, I would've thought that following the central air conditioning model, by having a central heat store (e.g. molten salt) and then pumping varying quantities of that around to maintain a given temperature would allow a lot of flexibility. You could overheat the storage tank when electricity is cheaper, and just pump it at a slower rate to maintain the same temperature. Likewise when electricity becomes expensive, you can shut off the heaters and keep pumping the hot fluid around to maintain the desired temperature where it's needed for however long the heat in the central storage tank lasts.
@@EngineeringwithRosie
I wonder how much heat loss can be prevented through geometry alone- i.e., square/ cube law,
reducing heat losses by increasing the size of a single cell (or group of cells with a common heat loss surface), or choosing shapes with a more desirable volume/ surface proportion.
I also wonder if tunability beyond 30 % will be economic.
I suppose this comes down to complex economic and engineering considerations, so i'm excited for any future videos around this topic :)
Thank You Rosie :)
As an Aussie this continues my enthusiasm for high energy manufacturing in Australia.
Great episode, well research and I like the environmental focus. Has anyone considered using waste heat from nuclear plants?
Rosie mentioned that aluminium smelting is mostly colocated with hydro power. I think nuclear is typically built where hydro is unavailable, but I may not be 100% correct in that.
Calcination probably needs its own video. There is also the HILTCRC work on direct electric calcination of alumina.
Bonjour du Québec... listening intently!
Hi Rosie, have you covered dual rotor wind turbines yet?
So many facts, so well presented.
High temperature industrial uses of heat seem like the one sector that might suit next gen (non-light water) nuclear by cutting out the conversation to electricity via steam, which also requires water, so more efficient and suited to arid places away from water which tend to be less desirable for residential use, possibly including old mining or other industrial towns.
Thank you.
It's an oversimplification to say aluminium is 100% recyclable. Some aluminium is lost to oxidation during remelts. Alloys eventually become over combined with other metals such that it must be converted back to alumina to recover it. In both cases, the alumina would need to be re-smeltered to recover it, and it's the alumina that is being recycled. In practice, this is not being done.
IOW, aluminum production facilities need to to be able to deal more effectively with the intermittency (i.e., unreliability) of their electricity source (when switching away from reliable hydro electricity)
LOL new sub just for the commentary =-D
No no, you have it right. Its Aluminium.
Great stuff. Related/unrelated question about hydro - we see a lot of photos of water being shot out from the dam wall - why is that not captured by a second electricity generator like a water wheel or screw - seems a waste of a lot of power
What we see photos of doesn't necessarily happen as often as you *see* it. This is partly why you see photos of it.
I think most of those photos are of spillways at a hydroelectric dam rather than the outlet to the water that went through the turbines.
@@archstanton_live ok. thanks
@@SocialDownclimber oh right. thanks
Do you know any other power sinks for renewables. I thought aluminum was already zero carbon and it would be a good power sink, feel dumb now.
Hydrogen electrolysis is the other big one we have planned.
I think a relevant question is: do these various refinements need a carbon price or explicit emissions limits to make them actually happen. Or are they so cheap (or save money anyway) that they can be covered by the value of sticking 'zero carbon aluminium' on the ingots? Seems to me these things are not going to happen at scale unless they actually save money or are at least cost neutral overall (or are forced by emissions legislation).
7:08 New Zealand has fluctuations in the "power of electricity"? Did u mean to say "price of electricity"?
I did! Didn't notice I'd said that until nearly the final edit 😊 too late to go back and fix by then!
The absolute best way to settle a Aluminum vs Aluminium debate. 😂
All those old EV batteries need to be made into grid storage. 1000 batteries with 60kw of usage is 60 meg of storage. now do that each year. Plus each year it will increase. so in 10 years it would be over 1 billion watts of storage. Sure by then the first ones would be spent so they would have to be recycled. This means as solar grows the grid can backup more power during the day so the cost at night and day would be same price or at least close. also Flow batteries on large scales can even be used. Also solid iron batteries which like heat can be used in the desert.
Great coverage. As far as that power plant in the south of NZ goes it would be great to have that on the grid servicing new demand and perhaps enabling NZ to turn off our last fossil-fuel plants. To date Rio-Tinto have been holding the government hostage on threatening to close it unless they get redonculously cheap electricity, but a simple cost-benefit equation on what they do with that subsidy suggests NZ should say no.
There seems to be a slight problem : aluminium used in wind turbines is not recycled in the UK: turbines are left abandoned with no plans to recycle once stopped working.
Gracias
Cool stuff
It really is a shame that Australia isn't producing aluminium rather than just bauxite. Bauxite sells for around $USD40/tonne. About 4-5 tonnes of bauxite goes into making aluminium which sells for around $USD2000/tonne. Australia has massive reserves of sunlight for solar and massive amounts of coastline where they could easily install wind turbines. At about $USD1800/tonne it's gotta be worth thinking about doing it local. The largest wind turbines are now each capable of supplying enough power to process about 1 tonne of aluminium per hour. 1 tonne per hour isn't much but 5-10 turbines running 24/7 would be 100-200 tonnes per day or in the region of $200-400,000 per day, $70-140B/year.
Dang! I learned a lot from the first 2 minutes of this video.
Good use of nuclear power especially high temperature operating systems. Terrapower nuclear reactors good example. Don't need have systems that have to have variable power needs.
Why do you not mention nuclear power as an option for baseload power that is not location specific? It is after all the most sustainable power source due to the lowest CO2 emissions per kWh, lowest material consumption and lowest environmental impact. Apart from that, really good video.
nice video. I understand you issue with people speaking US english vs British or Australian english ... let alone US's sub englishes like texas... it's a nightmare in the US with English
I did not realize how much energy intensive Creation of Aluminum is (yes i am in the US).
I do enjoy your videos. Did i miss it in your video.. i was wondering the co2 and cost difference (roughly) of recycling vs new aluminum
I would love to see more videos about "hidden" carbon emissions and ways to reduce the carbon emission.
I have not noticed it but do you do update videos when there is a major update on one of your past topics?
At least we never fought a war to be opium drug dealers.... So I will proudly pronounce it aluminum... It's amusing how the distractions, get so much of our brain's attention lol
Large solar forges can contribute significant heat to offset fuel burning. Titanium production is another similar situation.
A few people are complaining about the delivery speed in the comments. I like it but it doesn't suit everyone it seems. Time for a second channel with the video speed set to 0.8? Engineering with Slowsie?
The future is exciting!
But if we perfect the (two chamber) molten salt reactor, as invented by Alvin Weinberg, then we can have all the electricity (and energy) that we need, with no carbon at all.
If we bring together several of our videos one realizes that steel, cement, copper and aluminum production is responsible for more than 20% of emissions. If the media stopped worrying about aircraft emissions (2%) and focused on these 4 materials, the pay off would be 10 times greater.
Perhaps the parts of the process that require high temperatures might be a nitch use of Hydrogen. If H2 is burnt in air you get a pretty hot flame. If it is burnt in the Oxygen that was produced as a by product in the electrolysis process you get an even hotter flame. If you pass the Hydrogen and Oxygen through electrical discharges to change the H2 into 2H atoms. an even hotter flame. The faster you can bring the process up to temperature with a greater delta T between the heat source and the process, the less total energy you have to use. Less is wasted in heat loss.
Thanks!
I would add nuclear power to the renewable power as a source of clean power for aluminum (or aluminium) production. As nuclear power is best as a source of constant power, the ability to ramp the power consumed by the refining up and down would also help absorb excess power. I know that there is an aluminum facility near the Nine-Mile nuclear power plant in New York state.
What prevents the smelter having it's own small nuclear reactor or 2 or 3?
Cost probably.
Wondering if recycling aluminium hydroxide can also be zero CO2
That would make ling-term energy storage in aluminium more viable.
I live in Quebec, Canada, land of green aluminium.
I love Quebec! I've visited probably ten times for work and to visit family. I was supposed to visit Quebec hydro last time but instead I got covid and stayed inside a hotel room for ten days.
CO2 emissions are important, but really are a negligible problem compared to the contaminated red mud waste steps.
The industry needs to push to have the iron content of the bauxite coming from the mines reduced by 80%.
This can be easily done by partial H2 reduction of the iron oxides to make them magnetic and use the related separation methods.
This is a proven solution the wound have a dramatic and rapid impact on one of the world's biggest waste issues.
I was gonna say before watching the video, "just buy it from Norway, problem sorted!". 🙂
Great in principle, but sadly i think norway cannot be scaled up to grow with demand 😅