Alcoa 1997 Annual Report Download - page 15

Download and view the complete annual report

Please find page 15 of the 1997 Alcoa annual report below. You can navigate through the pages in the report by either clicking on the pages listed below, or by using the keyword search tool below to find specific information within the annual report.

Page out of 65

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • 6
  • 7
  • 8
  • 9
  • 10
  • 11
  • 12
  • 13
  • 14
  • 15
  • 16
  • 17
  • 18
  • 19
  • 20
  • 21
  • 22
  • 23
  • 24
  • 25
  • 26
  • 27
  • 28
  • 29
  • 30
  • 31
  • 32
  • 33
  • 34
  • 35
  • 36
  • 37
  • 38
  • 39
  • 40
  • 41
  • 42
  • 43
  • 44
  • 45
  • 46
  • 47
  • 48
  • 49
  • 50
  • 51
  • 52
  • 53
  • 54
  • 55
  • 56
  • 57
  • 58
  • 59
  • 60
  • 61
  • 62
  • 63
  • 64
  • 65

13
Hold Down
the Dust
A custom-built loader
bucket has been delivered
to the carbon dust project
at Portland Aluminium in
Australia. The bucket has
the ability to pick up and
totally enclose damaged
bags from the stockpile
and convey them with
minimum spillage to the
process plant. This han-
dling method has been
developed to minimize
site contamination.
Growth at Wagerup
Construction work is
under way to increase
operating capacity of the
Wagerup alumina
refinery from 1.75 to 2.19
million mt per year. The
$193 million (A$257.5
million) project is sched-
uled for completion by
mid-1999. This is the first
stage of a planned expan-
sion at Wagerup to 3.3
million mt per year, for
which AWAC has obtained
environmental approval.
More Power for
Portland
Agreement has been
reached between the
Victorian state govern-
ment and the Portland
Aluminium smelter joint
venture participants for
the provision of 100
megawatts of supplemen-
tary power to the smelter.
With the exception of
Alcoa of Australia, which
owns 45% of the smelter,
participants will use the
additional power to begin
progressively restarting
their respective shares of
Portland’s idle capacity.
The five-year power
contract will enable the
staged optimization of
output from the existing
plant, subject to envi-
ronmental and other
regulatory requirements,
technical considerations,
and market demand.
The government and
joint venture participants
will explore options for
extension of the added
power supply beyond the
next five years. Alcoa of
Australia is not restart-
ing its share of idled
capacity at Portland.
Environment
A World’s First in
Recycling
At its Portland smelter, Alcoa of Australia
has developed a facility to recycle the spent
linings of aluminum smelting pots rather
than dispose of them as waste. The linings
consist mainly of carbon, refractory and
insulation materials, along with fluorides
from the smelting process. Some of the
material contains trace amounts of cyanide.
The first of its kind in the world, the new
facility is a full-scale pilot plant — the only
way to test the complete process. It’s
designed to recapture aluminum fluoride
for reuse in the smelting process while
destroying any cyanide and creating a
by-product usable as road base or construc-
tion aggregates.