Researchers at Trinity College Dublin are testing a new type of concrete made using red mud, a residue from alumina refining. The project, supported by Enterprise Ireland and carried out with Gannon Eco and McGrath Quarries, has progressed from laboratory research to trials using industrial batching equipment. The university reported on 22 October that the geopolymer concrete formulations reduced the carbon footprint by 67.8–79.8 per cent against a CEM II-A/L cement reference. The comparison included raw material supply, transport and manufacturing. To know the futuristic market and value proposition of red mud, explore the report " A Comprehensive Analysis of Bauxite Residue (Red Mud): Sustainability, Resource Recovery and Strategic Recommendations " Laboratory tests also found that the...
Domestic spot alumina prices edged down slightly last week amid flat trading activity. Recent alumina price movements were mainly attributed to earlier concentrated restocking by downstream buyers, which has led to accumulating inventories at rail stations and smelters. Coupled with supply-side maintenance-driven output cuts that are still building, readily available spot volumes have tightened relatively. Only sporadic tender deals were heard recently, leaving prices in a temporary steady phase. On the bauxite front, domestic ore prices saw limited movement last week. Supply-side bottlenecks are unlikely to ease in the near term, with mines prioritising captive supply, leaving little excess spot material available. For imported ore, freight rates rebounded slightly and consecutively last...
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RUSAL, the Russian aluminium giant, under the "2022 RUSAL Scholarship" initiative, wishes to educationally aid highly qualified Guinean practitioners, cardiologists, surgeons, nursing specialists and laboratory assistants. The programme will guide 50 Guineans through higher medical education for free in the Krasnoyarsk State Medical University (KrasGMU) and Pharmaceutical College. The scholarship programme will continue for 4 to 9 years, depending on the educational duration of each doctor, and RUSAL will invest a total of USD 3 million for the education of Guinean professionals. RUSAL will look after the candidate's relocation, accommodation and educational bills while paying for the scholarships. The students are being offered internships at the company’s medical centres. People acing...
World alumina production in April 2022 came in at 11.063 million tonnes, registering a downfall of 2.73 per cent from 11.373 million tonnes in March, found the International Aluminium Institute. However, the output in March registered a month-on-month hike of 12.43 per cent from 10.116 million tonnes. On a year-on-year basis, world alumina production in April also stood 4.65 per cent lower than 11.603 million tonnes, according to IAI data. In the first four months of the year, world alumina production totalled 44.181 million tonnes, a decrease of 3 per cent from 45.546 million tonnes during the same period last year. In China, alumina production in April 2022 amounted to 6.077 million tonnes, recording a month-on-month decline of 3.23 per cent from 6.280 million tonnes. On a year-on-year...
QEM Ltd successfully has commissioned a pilot plant to evaluate the production of oil shale and vanadium pentoxide with resources from its flagship in north-western Queensland, the Julia Creek Project. QEM is an Australian producer of vanadium pentoxide and energy. The company is supposed to inspect the extraction process of high purity alumina (HPA), a critical metal used in the battery making industry. Luckily enough, the Julia Creek plant has abundant resources at its main working facility. The provisional pilot plant has been installed at the Melbourne headquarters of the HRL Technology Group and will continue operating for six months until the commercial demonstration plant construction completes. Gavin Loyden, the Managing Director of QEM, has declared that the pilot plant...
UAE’s largest industrial organisation, excluding gas and oil, Emirate Global Aluminium (EGA), has declared today a venture with the American University of Sharjah’s College of Engineering to study the beneficial qualities of re-using food waste to enhance the soil manufactured from bauxite residue. The research aims to find if the intermixing of food waste, biochar and bauxite residue would give birth to a fertile soil easily applicable in vegetation and other production facilities. EGA cooperates with the American University of Sharjah in the second phase of development within the duration of the three-year research project on the re-utilisation of bauxite residue, a by-product of the alumina extraction process. Three extensive years of hard work resulted in the joining of two...
Paris-headquartered industrial minerals manufacturing company Imerys S.A. has reportedly collaborated with Yellow Door Energy to build a 4.67-MWp solar plant at its white fused alumina refinery in Bahrain. As per the report, more than 8,500 solar panels will be installed in the plant located across 25,000 square metre (6.17 acres), and will be connected to the internal distribution network of the refinery operated by Imerys and Manama-based Al Zayani Industries. This an initiative by Imerys to walk a step closer to reduce carbon emissions as the solar plant is expected to produce 7.6 GWh of clean electricity in the first year of operation. Therefore, it will help curtailing 4,800 tonnes of carbon emissions, meeting between 15 and 20 per cent of the refinery’s energy consumptions. It is...
The JORC resource is being considered by the two companies, Vytas Resources and its 33% partner Accelerate Resources for their joint venture, the Tambellup kaolin project in southwestern parts of Western Australia, keeping in mind that during this quarter, Vytas is planning an entry in ASX IPO. In November 2021, Accelerate swapped its Tambellup Project for a 33% interest in Vytas’ critical minerals and technology business. The section mainly focuses on producing high-purity alumina for hydrogen production, solar panels and the battery storage supply chain. The same year, Accelerate and Vytas was supposed to focus on developing a new technology material company mainly relying on the Tambellup project and Vytas’ existing silica assets. Altogether they were going to produce high-purity...
China’s alumina output in April 2022 (30 calendar days) settled at 6.397 million tonnes, including 6.201 million tonnes of metallurgical-grade alumina, says SMM data. Metallurgical-grade alumina output averaged 206,000 tonnes per day, down 2.2 per cent M-o-M but up by 5.05 per cent Y-o-Y. In April, the number of production days reduced by one day compared to the previous month, resulting in lower productivity in several sectors. The roasting of alumina factories in Luoyang was limited due to limitations of atmospheric environmental protection legislation. Furthermore, because Henan's local natural gas supply was limited in April, some businesses cut production, resulting in a drop in output. The output of Henan and Guizhou has decreased, mostly due to the fact that mine safety work in...
Australian mining giant Rio Tinto will collaborate with Japan’s Sumitomo Corporation to construct a 2MW green hydrogen production facility at the former’s Yarwun alumina refinery located in Gladstone. The proposed pilot project is going to yield 300 tonnes of green hydrogen to sufficiently cater to the Gladstone Hydrogen Ecosystem. This plant would also accelerate the usage of hydrogen in the alteration of gas for the refining procedure of alumina. The Gladstone Hydrogen Ecosystem consists of unanimous bodies like Sumitomo, the Gladstone Ports Corporation, Gladstone Regional Council, Australian Gas Networks and CQ University Australia. Before moving to large scale operations, the pilot plant would target domestic offtake and mobility solutions before aiming toward large-scale exports as...
The broken sprinklers in the LAlumina Burnside Refinery are causing the red mud to dry down and spread via wind around the neighbouring Pelican Crossing locality. Human beings residing in the Ascension Parish region have to unnecessarily deal with the red dust flying in the air whenever the wind is strong. After the refinery closed down, the company was asked to contain the red mud with water sprinklers to keep the entity wet so that it wouldn’t blow out in a gale. But what is left out of the LAlumina Burnside Refinery is a sore site containing a pond of harmful waste material (red mud) produced during alumina extraction from bauxite ore. People living in Gonzales, Louisiana now know that it is the company’s fault that they are suffering for an ample amount of time. As soon as the...
The largest shareholder of Altech Chemicals Ltd Deutsche Balaton Aktiengesellschaft (Deutsche Balaton) has transformed 15,000,000 enlisted options which will expire on 31 st May 2022 with a conversion price of $0.08 each, for total proceeds of $1,200,000. Eminent shareholder, Delphi Unternehmensberatung Aktiengesellschaft (Delphi) for total proceeds of $921,543, has converted 11,519,296 listed options as a bonus. Iggy Tan, the Managing Director of Altech Chemicals exclaimed: "Altech is extremely pleased to have the support of these major shareholders at a very exciting time for the Company. Altech recently announced the outstanding preliminary feasibility study results for its Silumina AnodesTM battery materials project in Germany, which included a pre-tax NPV(8) of US$507 million, as...
In March 2022, alumina production in Europe (incl. Russia) stood at 769,000 tonnes, reflecting a month-on-month decline of 7,000 tonnes or 0.90 per cent from 776,000 tonnes. Monthly downfall in March continued as alumina output in February also stood down M-o-M by 12.32 per cent from 885,000 tonnes. On a year-on-year calculation, alumina production in March 2022 also represented a downfall of 13.50 per cent from 889,000 tonnes. Total production in three months (from January to March) this year amounted to 2.430 million tonnes, down by 6.47 per cent quarter-on-quarter from 2.598 million tonnes and 5.67 per cent year-on-year from 2.576 million tonnes. In the entire year of 2021, alumina production in Europe (incl. Russia) totalled 10.4 million tonnes, flaunting a rise of 1.81 per cent from...
In March 2022, alumina production in Africa & Asia (ex-China) was 1.088 million, up by 1.21 per cent month-on-month from 1.075 million tonnes, found the International Aluminium Institute. However, the output in February was down from its previous month by 6.44 per cent from 1.149 million tonnes. In three-month time ended March 31, alumina production in Africa & Asia (ex-China) totalled 3.312 million tonnes, 2.76 per cent less than 3.406 million tonnes in Q4 2021 despite a hike in the March output. On a year-on-year basis, Africa & Asia’s alumina production in 1Q2022 also stood down by 5.3 per cent from 3.145 million tonnes. On a year-on-year calculation, alumina production in Africa & Asia (ex-China) in March 2022 recorded a marginal change compared to 1.074 million tonnes. The worldwide...
The global alumina industry had witnessed limited but significant number of events. To begin with, Alpha HPA (A4N), based in New South Wales, Australia, has been awarded a $15.5 million grant from the Commonwealth Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources. Rio Tinto Plc has agreed to engage into a development agreement with Innord Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Geomega Resources Inc., for a bauxite residues iron phase product. Also, Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy, the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, and Kumara Mangalam Birla, Chairman of the Aditya Birla Group, inaugurated the Grasim Industries Limited caustic soda production plant at Balabhadrapuram, East Godavari district, on Thursday, April 21. According to the Indian Industrial Value Chain Council (IIVCC), the group...
Australia-based battery minerals producing company Lava Blue has been granted US$ 5.2 million under the Government’s Critical Minerals Accelerator Initiative to evolve techniques to refine critical minerals used in the lithium-ion battery supply chain. Michael McCann, the managing director of Lava Blue, declared that this grant would help suffice a US$ 12 million Queensland project over the next two and a half years. McCann commented: “This grant will allow Lava Blue processes to be applied to the recovery of several valuable minerals from vanadium pentoxide processing waste, including high purity alumina and potentially magnesium and residual vanadium. “The outcome will be to greatly improve the economics of vanadium recovery and provide new supplies of high-purity minerals into global...
Situated in New South Wales, Australia, Alpha HPA (A4N) has received a grant of $15.5 million from the Commonwealth Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources. The grant falls under the jurisdiction of the Critical Minerals Accelerator Initiative (CMAI) and will be utilised to expand and speed up the production capacity of the Precursor Production Facility (PPF). As the primary step towards HPA First Project, the PPF is being constructed at this moment in Gladstone. Managing Director of Alpha HPA Rimas Kairaitis remarked, “These additional funds will allow Alpha to accelerate its response to inbound demand for additional product volumes, in particular, the production of HPA tablets to meet the immediate demand for sapphire glass production, and rapidly establish Alpha HPA in...
According to the Indian Industrial Value Chain Council (IIVCC), the group representing the organizations involved in the industrial production and consumption supply chain activities across India stated that the state-owned integrated aluminium company Nalco, whose surfeit quantity of alumina produced remains inaccessible to the domestic aluminium manufacturers, now that manoeuvring them towards considerable dependency on imports and inflating their cost load. Ashok Kumar Agrawal, the National Convener of IIVCC, Nalco was allotted bauxite mines in gratis to uplift the national aluminium industry. Consequently, the surplus alumina that is not being absorbed by Nalco needs to be supplied to other aluminium producers rather than exporting the raw material. The domestic alumina demand of...
On 26 th April 2022, the Indian multinational conglomerate company, headquartered in Mumbai, Reliance Industries (RIL) and the Abu Dhabi Chemicals Derivatives Company RSC (TA’ZIZ) signed a shareholding agreement for a chemical project in Ruwais, Abu Dhabi. However, this development delivers high significance, as it will eye on Chlor-alkali, ethylene dichloride (EDC) and polyvinyl chloride (PVC) production, which are used in an extensive variety of industrial applications. Furthermore, it is anticipated to unfold new revenue paths for RIL as well as the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) and ADQ, an Abu Dhabi-based investment and holding company, who are strategic partners in TA’ZIZ, a joint venture organization. According to an industry expert, who states that chaired by Indian...
According to the latest data revealed by the International Aluminium Institute, the world alumina production amounted to 10.863 million tonnes in March 2022 (including metallurgical and chemical), an increase of 7.38 per cent month-on-month from 10.116 million tonnes. That brought the total global alumina production in the first quarter of the current year to 32.608 million tonnes, which was, however, down by 5.02 per cent from 34.332 million tonnes in the previous quarter. The reason for the quarter-on-quarter downfall in world alumina output despite a rise in March was a sharp fall of production in February from 11.629 million tonnes to 10.116 million tonnes (M-o-M). As per the calculation, that was a plunge of 13.01 million tonnes, following a drop of 1.18 per cent in the previous...
