Indian aluminium stalwarts talk about economic viability of waste reutilization at NCNFM 2016

Issues related to industrial ecology and sustainability are of paramount importance today. With rampant industrial onslaughts on the environment reaching its edge, global aluminium industry has woken up to the situation. Indian aluminium industry, which is poised to play a crucial role in redefining the country’s infrastructure scenario, is too taking the cause of sustainability rather seriously.

Domestic aluminium industry players across the value chain i.e. bauxite miners, alumina refiners, aluminium smelters, aluminium extruders and aluminium recyclers are now seeking technology upgrades that would help them lower the levels of industrial effluents that are part of their respective sectoral processes. From adopting advanced red mud valorization procedure, extracting value from fly ash, reutilizing spent potlines, to considering a shift to renewable energy sources for the metal production, every player is banking on technologies that allow them to work towards sustainable development.

At the National Conference on Non-Ferrous Minerals & Metals- 2016 which was kicked off today in Jamshedpur, India’s non-ferrous sector stalwarts steered their discussions towards this issue while talking about economic viability in the field of waste reutilization.

The two-day Conference, organized by Corporate Monitor in association with CSIR-National Metallurgical Laboratory and National Institute of Technology, at Hotel Ramada Jamshedpur, was inaugurated by Dr. K Muraleedharan, Chairman NCNFM 2016.

His speech was followed by addresses by dignitaries like Prof. Rambabu Kodali, Director, NIT, Guest of Honour Dr. V Balasubramanyam, Director (Production) Nalco, Dr. P.K. Banerjee President & CTO, Hindalco, and Mr. Abhijeet Pati, CEO Aluminium, Vedanta Group, who was also felicitated later along with Dr. Tapan Kumar Chand, CMD, Nalco.

Dr. V Balasubramanyam, in his speech, talked about sustainability and the need for reutilization of spent potlines and red mud, not on an experimental basis but on an economical level.

Dr. P.K. Banerjee stressed on the importance of becoming energy efficient in the current scenario and how that would help in reducing overall cost of production. He also talked about sustainable methods of fly ash and red mud reutilization. He pointed out that Hindalco Industries in India is investing in a number of R&D projects aimed at implementing these waste reutilization processes on an economical level.

Emphasizing on the need of boosting aluminium applications sector growth by various stakeholders, Mr. Abhijeet Pati said, “There are 3,000 applications of aluminium across the globe, and in our country we have only 300 applications of aluminium- the gap is very large. We need to make our technologies really relevant so that the application domain continues to grow bigger and bigger in the country.”

He said it was necessary to attract “semis, secondaries and tertiary manufacturers of aluminium under the globe” of events such as this one because he believes, only by doing that aluminium consumption in the country can be triggered.

The inaugural session of the National Conference is to be followed by a Theme Paper Session, where a number of presentations will be made on various technology trends and recycling activities related to non-ferrous metals.