FLSmidth has an experienced team of engineers and support staff with extensive alumina experience located in offices around the world – and offers the latest equipment for most areas of an alumina plant.

 

 

 

Red side, white side and alumina handling
Based on the Bayer process, invented by the Austrian chemist Josef Bayer, the alumina production process can be split into a ‘red side’ and a ‘white side’.

Red side solutions
FLSmidth now offers equipment for the complete bauxite handling, storage, crushing and grinding flowsheet, complementing the digestion or dissolution of bauxite in hot caustic liquor. This is followed by the complete Settler-Washer train flowsheet for Red Mud using the leading technology acquired from Dorr-Oliver Eimco.

White side solutions

FLSmidth offers white side equipment, covering the complete flowsheet after the hydrate precipitation process, including equipment technology from FLSmidth Moeller for alumina handling and load-out.

Overall, FLSmidth equipment covers more than 50 percent of the equipment needs of a complete alumina plant, from the bauxite mine to the above refinery equipment. In addition, FLSmidth also offers all equipment for alumina handling in the smelters.

Urbanisation and a growing industry

The aluminium industry is growing, thanks to the properties and the versatility of the metal. Aluminium has a huge array of uses and is found in thousands of products around the world. And as urban populations grow, so does the demand for aluminium.

The world has produced about 800 million tons of aluminium since the modern aluminium industry began in 1886 – and about 73 percent is still in use today. But the aluminium industry is still growing, and FLSmidth offers a large range of services to assist aluminium producers increase production.

Aluminium represents about eight percent of the earth’s crust (only oxygen and silicium are more common), but it wasn’t until 1886, when Hall-Heroult invented an electrolytic reduction process to produce primary aluminium from alumina, that the world started producing, and using, aluminium on a large scale. Today, aluminium is an important metal for the mining industry. Six of the fi fteen largest mining and metal companies produce primary aluminium, and worldwide production totals around 37 million tpy.

FLSmidth’s synergies with the cement industry

FLSmidth first entered the alumina industry more than 100 years ago, offering tube mills for grinding bauxite and long rotary kilns for the calcination of aluminium hydroxide or hydrate to alumina. But it was the 1973 oil crisis that forced alumina producers to look for new ways to reduce energy consumption.

Stationary calciners became the industry standard almost overnight thanks to their ability to reduce fossil fuel consumption by 25-30 percent compared to rotary kilns. The new precalcination technology developed by FLSmidth for cement led to the Gas
Suspension Calciner for alumina, which saw the light of day for the fi rst time in 1984, when it was ordered by Hindalco in India.