Industrial Aluminum Electrolysis Course 2024 (IAE 2024): Advancing Aluminum Production

Enabling a Better Understanding of Constraints, Opportunities, and Practices for Improving Cell Design, Productivity, Energy Efficiencies, and Decarbonization

December 1–6, 2024 • Sydney, Australia

Course Curriculum

Returning after a seven-year hiatus, this course promotes the exchange of scientific and technological information on advancements in primary aluminum production to a worldwide audience.

Learning Objectives

• To enable participants employed in aluminum smelting operations (and for the potroom support services, such as anode production and rodding, cell relining, and dry scrubbers) to return to their job with the ability to enhance their smelters’ performance with respect to changed management objectives, such as increased productivity, lower energy consumption, better environmental performance, etc.
• To enable people employed in the external support services - such as cathode block manufacturers, point feeder manufacturers, materials suppliers (including in-house anode production) etc. to understand the importance of the quality controls required.
• To update scientists and students at universities and research centers.
• To give information also to individuals interested in primary aluminum production.

Course Topics

The program includes but is not limited to the following topics:

The Science Behind Extracting Metals from Their Ores

• Types of ores, stability, and “reductants” to enable metal extraction
• Why produce aluminum using a consumable carbon anode?
• Controlling laws influencing electrochemical reactions in aluminum electrowinning

The Cell

• Cell design and materials used for cell construction
• Anodes, cathode, bath chemistry, and alumina feeding and dissolution
• Impact of alumina properties on pot operations and challenges ahead

Electrochemical Science Influencing Productivity

• Current efficiency
• Cell measurements and control systems
• Potroom operations and diagnosis and correction of irregularly operating cells
• Preheating of cells, start-up, and early operation
• Heat balance and importance of side ledge

Energy Efficiency and Fluoride Emissions

• Cell voltage
• Minimizing energy consumption
• Varying the rate of electrochemical reactions (current density and electrode overpotential)
• Amperage increase
• Power modulation
• Fluoride emissions - source, generation, capture, and minimization
• Anode effects and perfluorocarbon gas emissions minimization

Decarbonization - The Road to 2050

• Present state of the aluminum industry
• The roads to net-zero GHG emission - impact of the energy source
• New processes - CCUS, inert anodes, and chloride electrolysis

For More Information

For more information about this meeting, please complete the meeting inquiry form or contact: