SPECTRAFLOW RECEIVES A NEW ORDER FOR TWO CROSSBELT ANALYZERS FROM EMIRATES GLOBAL ALUMINIUM (EGA), UNITED ARAB EMIRATES
EGA is one of the largest industrial companies in the United Arab Emirates and is the world’s largest producer of “premium aluminium” (EGA About us, 2024). After a successful installation of the their first SpectraFlow Crossbelt Analyzer at the Al Taweelah Carbon Plant in 2021, EGA has placed a repeat order for two further SpectraFlow Crossbelt Analyzers to measure their recycled anode butt material at Phase 2 of their Al Taweelah Carbon plant and at the Jebel Ali Carbon Plant to optimize their anode consumption. EGA operates across the full aluminium value chain, from bauxite mining in the Republic of Guinea, to smelting and refining in Abu Dhabi and Dubai.
About Al Taweelah:
EGA’s Al Taweelah site is located in Khalifa Industrial Zone, approximately halfway between Abu Dabi and Dubai. It consists of a smelter and refinery. At the date of completion, it was the largest single-site smelter in the world. has a nameplate production capacity of ~1.5 million tons.
About Jebel Ali:
The smelter at Jebel Ali was the first smelter to be built in the UAE, the construction of which began in 1976. Thanks to eight separate expansions since inception, Jebel Ali’s nameplate production now sits at 1 million tons per year.
SpectraFlow Installation for Anode Production Optimization:
In order to meet their metal production, and consequently their anode consumption needs, EGA supplements their anode production, with recycled anode butts. The spent butts tend to accumulate impurities, such as sodium (Na) from the cryolite bath material. These impurities reduce the reactivity of the anodes and increase the carbon consumption, decreasing cell productivity (Mofor, et al., 2023), thereby increasing costs. EGA have thus sought to improve their Na levels in their recycled consumed anode butt material. To do this, they would need to make quick remediations to the operational control of their butt cleaning, which involves removing the Na from the anodes. The manual process of taking samples, processing them, and then measuring them in the laboratory takes too much time for EGA to react timeously to changes in their spent anode compositions. Additionally, the sample representativity is inadequate to represent ppm level changes in a nugget-type impurity such as the high Na-bath material. The only solution in such an instance, is an online analyzer.
SpectraFlow Analytics (SFA) is the only provider of online near infrared (NIR) bulk material analyzers which able to measure both organic and inorganic concentrations. By providing the minerals industry with real time results of the mineralogical, elemental and moisture composition of their dry bulk material their value chain, SFA has become an industry leader in the field of advanced process control. For this reason, and for it’s successful demonstration of the technology at Al Taweelah phase 1, SFA has been selected by EGA to meet their anode recycling quality control needs at the Al Taweelah and Jebel Ali carbon plants.
At EGA’s Carbon Plants, the spent anode buts are first processed through a layer of crushers and screens, the result of which is that the mostly carbon material on the conveyor belts is statistically homogeneous. Thus, the analytical results of the SpectraFlow Crossbelt Analyzer are more representative than physical samples taken from the conveyor, and achieve an accuracy at the ppm level. This is important because impurity concentrations in the spent anodes can vary from 50-1500ppm, as with sodium, their most important impurity to limit.
SFA is contracted to measure Fe, Si, Na, Ca and V in ppm, and S and Ash in % the crushed spent anode butts on a conveyor belt as the material passes from the rodding plant through to the blending and baking station.
Na ppm trend in routine butt measurement at Al Taweelah Phase 1, showing reduction in both variation and concentration over time with SFA usage with operational control (Mofor, et al., 2023).
These SpectraFlow orders are the 20th and 21st in the Minerals Industry. The orders raises the installed based in the UAE to 3 analyzers (3 Crossbelt) and worldwide to over 80 analyzers (>40 Crossbelt & >40 Airslide).
SpectraFlow Analytics Ltd. Switzerland are the experts in providing online analysis for the cement and minerals industry without any radioactive sources nor neutron generators. The NIR technology used for the SpectraFlow Analyzers does not require any permits or licenses and there are no restrictions in buying, importing or maintaining the analyzers. This results in very low operating costs and high availability of the analyzers combined with highly accurate measurement results.
References:
EGA About us. (2024, May 7). Retrieved from Emirates Global Aluminium: https://www.ega.ae/en/about-us
Mofor, E. G., Kaur, R., Pandey, A. D., Bitra, M., Muehlen, P., Al Jabri, N., . . . Al Marzouqi, A. (2023). Practical Use of Online Chemical Analyser for Spent Anodes Quality Control. 41st International ICSOBA Conference, (pp. 1069-1079). Dubai.