China Jilin to invest $340 mln to produce alumina using coal ash

The government of Baishan City, Jilin Province, is planning to spend 2.2 billion yuan ($340 million) in building a project that extracts alumina from coal ash.

Coal fly ash, an industrial by-product, is derived from coal combustion in thermal power plants. Coal fly ash is rich in alumina (upto 45%), which makes it a potential substitute for bauxite as prime source of aluminium. With the diminishing reserves of bauxite resources in China as well as the increasing demand for alumina, recovering alumina from fly ash has attracted extensive attentions.

Several Chinese players are working on new technology that could produce alumina not from traditional bauxite but from fly ash. This has resulted in alumina import decline in the country in the last one year falling by almost 40 percent from the January-April 2014 period.

Large-scale production of alumina from coal fly ash may still be a distant dream but China has already gained in momentum in applying the technology to become self-sufficient in alumina production in the long run.