Tag: Alcoa

Alcoa Receives Government Backing To Pilot Carbon-Reduction Technology At Pinjara

Alcoa Receives Government Backing To Pilot Carbon-Reduction Technology At Pinjara

Alcoa Corporation has received A$10.3 million of funding from Australian governments to conduct pilot trials on a new carbon reduction technology that supports Alcoa’s Refinery of the Future initiative. Alcoa of Australia has received support to test electric calcination with A$8.6 million from The Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) and A$1.7 million from Western Australia’s Clean Energy Future Fund (CEFF). Calcination is the final stage in the alumina refining process and uses fossil fuels, primarily natural gas, to heat alumina hydrate crystals. Electric calcination, when powered with renewable energy, has the potential to significantly reduce carbon emissions. Additionally, electrification of calciners would allow significant amounts of residual energy, currently lost in the atmosphere as steam, to be captured and reused,...

Crowdsourcing on large scale

Crowdsourcing on large scale

ALCOA has used an online crowdsourcing competition to connect with some of the world’s smartest people to improve the descaling process at its Wagerup Alumina Refinery in WA. The company collaborated with Unearthed, an innovative online business which connects the resources industry to thousands of developers, data scientists and innovators around the world who pitch novel and diverse solutions to industry challenges. Called Scale Away, the competition challenged participants to come up with ways to more efficiently descale tanks, vessels and pipes. During the refining process, which involves extracting alumina from bauxite, scale builds up and causes lost production from reduced available tank volume. Its removal is costly and is time consuming. More than 90 innovators from 20 countries registered...

Mine Rehabilitation: A lasting legacy

Mine Rehabilitation: A lasting legacy

MCA chief executive Tania Constable believes Australia is a leading jurisdiction in sustainable mining practices, including mine rehabilitation and closure. “The implementation and performance of the Australian mining industry in rehabilitation is continuously improving, driven by ongoing investment in rehabilitation practice,” Ms Constable said. “There is no ‘one size fits all’ approach to mine rehabilitation but over many years, the industry has worked closely with government and research institutions to develop and share improved practices.” Ms Constable said that leading practice approaches start with establishing a final closure design that balances the needs of government and local community. “Rehabilitation should be integrated into life-of-mine planning, and wherever practical implemented progressively as the mine develops,” she said. In practice, good management...

Asbestos fears for Alcoa workforce

Asbestos fears for Alcoa workforce

Thursday, July 16 2015 By Jane Goldsmith ALCOA has been hit by allegations that its workforce was exposed to asbestos in two separate incidents in the past eight weeks. WA’s three largest workers’ unions – the Electrical Trades Union of Australia, the Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union (AMWU) and the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union – called for an urgent asbestos audit of Alcoa’s WA operations, after workers discovered a covering they were grinding at Alcoa’s Pinjarra refinery, south of Perth, was partially made of asbestos. The incident followed a similar situation at the company’s Kwinana refinery, when a...