2 years of successful operation of our new NG anode baking furnace design
The industrial prototype is successfully operated by Bell Bay Aluminium since December 2017. To date, the converted zone (33 meters long pits) allowed Bell Bay Aluminium to produce approximately 8000 additional anodes (+ 15% productivity) with a confirmed 35% reduction in gas consumption and with no impact on anode quality. Operation and engineering teams are now working on a possible extension of the zone in order to increase further the Bell Bay anode baking capacity.
As a reminder, the NG Technology concept patented by Rio Tinto is based on removing partially or totally the headwalls to increase the anode loading ratio. The number of headwalls to be removed is selected depending on the anode dimensions in order to accommodate either an extra set of anodes or an anode dimension increase.