Alumina Project receives €5.9m in EU funding

The EU's Horizon 2020 has granted €5.9-million for the continued development of a patented alumina technology. The technology is co-owned by Nordic Mining and Institute for Energy Technology (IFE) and patented in Norway, Russia, Denmark and the US, as well as being approved by the European Patent Office.

The AlSiCal project is an ambitious research and innovation project established to assess and develop the patented Aranda-Mastin Technology (AM Technology) with the purpose of making the minerals and metals industry more sustainable and environmentally sound.

The AM Technology, which is owned by Nordic Mining and IFE, enables the co-production of three essential raw materials; alumina, silica and precipitated calcium carbonate (PCC), by using new resources with no bauxite residue and using carbon dioxide (CO2) during production. The AlSiCal project will innovate and develop the AM Technology towards zero CO2 emission from production.

The AlSiCal project consortium comprises 16 international partners from 9 countries and is led by IFE in Norway. The partners represent the full value chain in the minerals and metals industry: research and technology, mining and mineral exploration, technology development, end users, business developers and international industry organisations. In addition to Nordic Mining and IFE, the consortium includes, among others, Elkem, Herøya Industry Park and the European Aluminium Association.

The aim of the AlSiCal project is to further develop and assess the AM Technology for industrial scale production. A techno-economical study will be conducted, and the patented technology will also be assessed in terms of societal and environmental factors.

Nordic Mining’s CEO, Ivar S. Fossum comments: “We are pleased that the technology can now be further developed with funding from the EU’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme. We believe that this is an exceptional opportunity to combine green technology, metallurgical competence and minerals to develop new environmentally friendly industry on a global scale.”

Technology background

The patented AM Technology has been developed in cooperation between IFE and Nordic Mining. Parts of the technology have successfully been demonstrated in a small-scale pilot reactor at Herøya Industry Park in Norway.

Production of alumina is today mainly based on bauxite resources which are processed through the Bayer process that is linked with environmental and social challenges due to extensive land use and tailings deposition of large amounts of bauxite residue. The new technology aims at minimising waste with maximal utilisation of the bed rock, whilst achieving zero CO2 emission from production.

The AM Technology is based on leaching of alumina-rich anorthosite rock with hydrochloric acid at moderate temperature and pressure. Silica is collected from the leaching process and processed as a by-product. Aluminium chloride is extracted through a sparging process and subsequently calcined to form alumina. Precipitated calcium carbonate (PCC) is produced at the acid regeneration process-step, by integrated CO2 utilisation. PCC is a commodity used as filler in paper, plastics and paint, and silica is used as filler in tires and plastics, and in the production of cement. 

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