Date:
Monday, March 20, 2023
Time:
8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
Location:
San Diego Convention Center, Room 20ABC
Sponsored by:
TMS Light Metals Division; TMS Aluminum Committee
Organizer:
Dmitry Eskin Brunel University
Hear from invited presenters working in industry and academia at this session, which will kick off light metals programming at TMS2023. The session will conclude with a panel discussion featuring the participating speakers.
Learn about additional light metals programming planned at TMS2023 on the Technical Program web page.
Featured Speakers
Carl Duchesne, Laval University
Presentation Title: "Data Analytics for Advanced Process Monitoring and Control in Primary Aluminum Smelting"
About the Presentation
The primary aluminum industry currently faces many challenges, such as coping with declining quality and increasing variability in raw materials, finding new ways to increase energy efficiency and improve environmental footprint, etc. Data analytics can contribute to addressing these issues. Massive amounts of data containing valuable information for continuous process improvement are routinely collected from smelters and archived in data historians. New technologies to measure individual anode electrical currents in reduction cells and to assess anode quality using non-destructive testing, as well as anode tracking systems, are progressively introduced in plants, generate additional data, and provide new opportunities for data analytics. This talk overviews 15 years of research efforts made at Laval University in partnership with Alcoa Corporation, to develop new data-driven process analytical technologies along the anode production chain and process monitoring and fault detection schemes for different process units. Challenges and future opportunities will also be discussed.
About the Presenter
Carl Duchesne is a professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Université Laval. Duchesne holds a master's degree from Université Laval (1996) and a Ph.D. degree from McMaster University (2000), both in chemical engineering. He joined the Department of Chemical Engineering at Université Laval in 2002. Duchesne has been a member of the Aluminum Research Center – REGAL since 2006. He has more than 20 years of experience in the analysis of large industrial databases (Big Data) for different applications. His research activities focus on developing multivariate latent variable statistical methods for process monitoring and quality control. Duchesne’s research interests also include advanced process analytical sensors based on imaging, acousto-ultrasonics, and other types of non-destructive techniques.
Andre-Felipe Schneider, Hatch Ltd.
Presentation Title: "Numerical Modeling Tools for the Assessment of High-Amperage DC Busbars"
About the Presentation
At the most basic level, direct current (DC) busbars in a potline enable the electrochemical reduction of alumina by delivering current from the rectifiers to the cells and, therefore, can be seen as the circulatory system of a smelter. The busbars are carefully designed to obtain adequate current distributions in the pot collector bars, the pot-to-pot circuits, the pot risers, and the liaison busbars (passageways, input and output) circuits and must be designed to allow short-circuiting of the pots for relining. With the trend of amperage creep in many smelters, the busbar systems are experiencing increased temperatures due to the increased current densities, leading in some cases to failure of electrical insulators and excessive thermal expansion causing mechanical damage to different components (for example: plate joints, laminated sheets expansion joints, or concrete supports). To address these issues, a suite of physics-based numerical models was developed over the past 15 years to assess both the thermoelectrical (TE) and thermomechanical (TM) behavior of high-amperage DC conductors. These tools were used successfully in the amperage creep of several potlines operating different reduction technologies, both in the planning phase to prevent issues, and after the fact for diagnostics and debottlenecking solution development. The versatility of the modeling methodology also enables the detailed design of new busbars, such as booster section input and output circuits, of magnetic compensation loops, and of emergency, repair, and construction bypass bridges.
About the Presenter
Andre-Felipe Schneider is numerical analysis specialist at the Center for Excellence for Aluminium at Hatch Ltd. He previously worked for PCE Engineering (Porto Alegre, Brazil) beginning in 2001, where he mostly worked with aluminum reduction cells magnetohydrodynamics behavior and conceptual design of both passive and active magnetic compensation schemes. In 2008, he joined Hatch’s Centre of Excellence for Aluminium (Montréal, QC), where he initially focused on the thermo-electromechanical behavior of high-amperage DC circuits including busbars, welded plate and flexibles joints, bolted connections, pot start-up fuses, electrical insulators, and supports. The accumulated experience on such subjects over the past 15 years led to the detailed design and successful installation of several special-purpose conductors, such as booster circuits and magnetic compensation loops, as well as emergency, construction, and repair bypass bridges. He is also interested by the thermomechanical behavior of other cell components, such as potshells, anode bridge jacking mechanisms, superstructures and other heavy machinery. Recently, Schneider has been involved in the fatigue assessment of welded structures by means of local (numerical) approaches. He earned an MSc in metallurgical engineering from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, Brazil, in 2006.
Nancy Holt, Hydro Aluminium AS
Presentation Title: "Hydro Aluminium—Smelter Improvements Through Modelling and Digitalization"
About the Presentation
The aluminum industry is continuously striving to produce its product as sustainable and with as much profit as possible. Sustainability and profitability are the two main pillars of Hydro Aluminium. Today, Hydro seeks to realize this through focus on renewable energy, low-carbon aluminum production, and increased recycling. In this keynote, the focus is on primary aluminum production and how smelters have benefitted from modelling and digitalization and the developments of these tools. Developments have been amazing in the last decades. Several factors are key to this success. A few examples will take us through some achievements and point at the possibilities going forward. And further, there is a need to emphasize that this may not happen unless strategic anchoring and clear management leadership is in place together with an organizational structure.
About the Presenter
Nancy Holt holds a Ph.D. in plasma physics from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, Norway, and a master’s degree in technology management from the Norwegian School of Economics and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is currently program manager looking after academic collaboration for Hydro Aluminium’s technology developments and operation support. She has been with Hydro since 1991 and, as technical expert, worked on development for electrolysis, specializing in mathematical modelling and environmental topics. She has also participated in smelter improvement programs, been environmental manager at the Årdal Smelter, discipline manager environment, and involved in technology deliveries. She has contributed to TMS and other conferences both as author/co-author and session chair on several occasions.
Marlen Bertram, International Aluminium Institute
Presentation Title: "Importance of Transparent Data and Standardized Data Analysis for Decarbonization of the Aluminum Sector"
About the Presentation
This paper analyzes historical and future global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for the global aluminum sector as well as the industry allowance under an International Energy Institute (IEA) Net Zero Emissions by 2050 (NZE) scenario. The basis of this work is the environmental data collection (since 1980), the material flow model (since 2000), and transparent sectorial guidance on GHG calculations (2018 and 2021). In addition, the International Aluminium Institute (IAI) has been sharing benchmarking graphs of partial GHG emissions since 2008 and a complete dataset by 2022/2023 with member companies and is using the results to calculate an industry scenario. This GHG focused work package by the IAI is aimed at guiding and informing the industry’s efforts to meet global climate targets.
About the Presenter
Marlen Bertram, director, scenarios and forecasts, joined the International Aluminium Institute (IAI) in 2008. Bertram is responsible for IAI’s material flow analysis, including the Alucycle visualization, and develops scenarios and forecasts for the industry. She also manages work related to aluminum recycling and greenhouse gas modelling. Before joining the IAI, Bertram worked for the Organization of European Aluminium Refiners and Remelters, as manager, recycling, since 2004. She holds a degree as Dipl.-Ing. in environmental science and process engineering.
Matthew Krane, Purdue University
Presentation Title: "Issues in Macroscopic Modeling of Aluminum Direct Chill Casting"
About the Presentation
Most wrought aluminum is produced by direct chill (DC) casting, a semi-continuous solidification process providing feedstock for downstream deformation processing. Transport phenomena and solidification behavior in DC casting has been the subject of modeling over the past 30 years and, while this work has led to distinct improvements in understanding process behavior, there are still many outstanding issues. This talk begins with available experimental observations of industrial-scale DC casting. It then examines different approaches to modeling the slurry of free-floating solid, which forms from the grain-refined liquid pool, as well as ways to estimate the coalescence of that slurry into a rigid, solid matrix. Finally, this talk considers the purpose of these models, the reliability of the model outputs as a function of uncertainty in model input parameters, and the effect of choices for inclusion and form of representation of various physical mechanisms.
About the Presenter
Matthew Krane has been a professor of materials engineering at Purdue University since 1996 and a member of the Purdue Center for Metal Casting Research. His main research thrust is transport phenomena in metal solidification processing, including process modeling of VAR, ESR, DC casting, superalloy investment casting, and steel continuous casting, with other work on modeling dendrite growth, homogenization, ceramic thermal spray deposition, and iron and copper extraction. Many projects include uncertainty quantification of model predictions.
His formal education was in mechanical engineering (B.S., Cornell University; M.S., University of Pennsylvania; Ph.D., Purdue University), with concentrations in thermal engineering. He has been a visiting researcher at the University of Birmingham (UK), University of Greenwich (UK) and Université de Lorraine (France). His experience includes sponsored research, senior design projects, and consulting with the metals processing industry, and he has taught heat transfer, fluid mechanics, process design, solidification, materials processing, numerical methods, extractive metallurgy, and ethics in engineering practice.
Markus Apel, Access RWTH-Aachen
Presentation Title: "Microstructure Simulation as a Basis for Material Property and Casting Defect Predictions"
About the Presentation
Spatially and temporally resolved microstructure simulations have reached a level of maturity that allows not only to address fundamental aspects of microstructure formation, but also to address problems of technological relevance. In contrast to computational thermodynamics, spatially resolved phase-field models predict not only integral quantities, e.g. phase fractions, but also the solidification morphology and the distribution of alloying elements or secondary phases within the microstructure. This presentation will discuss various examples for aluminum and magnesium alloys demonstrating how microstructure simulations on the dendritic length scale contribute to a better prediction of the material behavior during solidification and the potential formation of casting defects. Phase-field simulations linked to thermodynamic databases i) lead to refined criteria for the estimation of hot tearing susceptibility, ii) provide the microsegregation of alloying and impurity elements and iii) thus supports the development of energy saving homogenization heat treatments.
About the Presenter
Markus Apel currently heads the microstructure simulation group at Access e.V., a private non-profit research center based in Aachen, Germany. Access is conducting R&D mainly in the field of metal casting, spanning the entire range from fundamental research on solidification and casting alloys towards the development of innovative casting solutions, including production of cast parts on a pilot-scale level. After his university education in physics, Apel has been working for more than 25 years on topics related to microstructure evolution in phase transformations, in particular using the phase field method. Along this time, the simulation software MICRESS was developed in his research group, capable of simulating the microstructure evolution in multicomponent and multiphase alloys of technical interest. Over the years, he has published more than 90 authored and co-authored papers. Nowadays, Apel is more and more interested in integrating phase-field models into ICME frameworks.
Arild Hakonsen, Hycast AS
Presentation Title: "Improving Safety and Performance of DC Casting Lines by Applying Digital Twins, Process Models and Vision Systems"
About the Presentation
Improving safety and performance has always been on the agenda for aluminum casthouses. In Hydro, and thus at Hycast, the vision for safety is “no personnel in hazard zones.” This implies that all situations and tasks involving personnel in proximity of molten metal should be avoided. This will require new technology. There is a huge potential for improving both safety and performance in the design of new casting lines. Recently Hycast has started to utilize digital twins in the design phase, where process models are linked to the control system allowing for virtual commissioning. In this keynote, some of the recent technology developments within Hydro and Hycast will be presented. This includes visual systems for cast monitoring and bleed out detection, robot sampling for chemistry analysis (OEM), and digital twins of complete casting lines.
About the Presenter
Arild Hakonsen has been working for Hycast AS since 2002. His current position is head of technology, Hycast AS. This position includes the responsibility for R&D, technology management, and intellectual property rights. Hakonsen has a master’s degree in physical metallurgy from the Norwegian Institute of Technology NTH, 1990, and a master’s degree in technology management from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Norwegian School of Economics (NHH) and UC Berkeley, 2008. Prior to working at Hycast, he was a research scientist at Hydro Aluminium from 1991-2002 focusing on solidification and modelling of DC-casting.
Elsa Olivetti, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Presentation Title: "Data Driven Methods to Increase Aluminum Recycling"
About the Presentation
Improving materials efficiency must play a role in decarbonizing metals production because these strategies are available to pursue now and, therefore, achievable along a shorter time horizon than more transformative processes such as novel production methods. In the face of an evolving scrap stream and shifts in product demand, industry-based recycling targets will not be achievable without coupling alloy design with considerations of emerging end-of-life scrap streams. Performance metrics must be broadened to include the ability for a new alloy to incorporate secondary material emerging from a dynamic scrap stream. Leveraging ever more powerful computational and data science tools, metallurgists can explore a broader range of compositional and processing dimensions, especially where opportunities are present to improve recyclability. This presentation will cover methods that investigate underexplored regions to guide the production of new alloys with endogenous links to include secondary material based on expected future flows of scrap.
About the Presenter
Elsa Olivetti is the Esther and Harold E. Edgerton Career Development Professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering (DMSE) and co-director of the MIT Climate and Sustainability Consortium at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Her research focuses on reducing the significant burden of materials production and consumption through increased use of recycled and waste materials; informing the early-stage design of new materials for effective scale up; and understanding the implications of policy, new technology development, and manufacturing processes on materials supply chains. Olivetti received her B.S. degree in engineering science from the University of Virginia in 2000 and her Ph.D. in materials science engineering from MIT in 2007.