A Chinese aluminium manufacturer is going to make aluminium with hydropower. The company will build a plant to produce about one million tonnes of aluminium using this green energy.
The plant will be built near the Mekong River, where there is plenty of hydropower available, writes Duurzaambedrijfsleven.nl. China has been building dams with hydro plants there since the 1990s. Aluminium producer China Hongqiao is also keen to move towards cleaner energy and has decided to build the new plant here.
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The company wants part of the plant, in Yunnan province, to be ready by the end of 2020 so that one million tonnes of aluminium can be produced. Eventually, the plant should be expanded so that two million tonnes of the material can be made.
More sustainable aluminium
The construction of this plant fits China's goal of making the aluminium industry more sustainable. There are already aluminium plants in the same region, most of which run on hydropower and produce 2.5 million tonnes of aluminium. What sets the Hongqiao plant apart is that it will soon be the only production facility for the company. All coal plants are closing their doors.
CO2 emissions
There is growing demand for aluminium, particularly from the automotive industry, but its production still generates high CO₂ emissions. Duurzaambedrijfsleven.nl reports that 0.8 per cent of all greenhouse gases worldwide come from aluminium production, and that this proportion is likely to increase. Aluminium is extracted from ore by passing steam over it, whereas in steel production the ore is heated. This makes it somewhat easier to use sustainable electricity. However, CO₂ will always be released during production, partly because the anodes (the negative terminal of a battery) are converted into CO₂ by the smelting processes.
Source: www.duurzaambedrijfsleven.nl
