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Montserrat

ABx’s 83% owned refining technology subsidiary, ALCORE, has developed a world-first process to produce industrial chemicals from aluminium smelter bath waste. The major products are hydrogen fluoride and metal sulfates.

The hydrogen fluoride is combined with aluminium hydroxide to produce aluminium fluoride via an existing, relatively low risk, commercial process.

ALCORE intends to construct commercial hydrogen fluoride and aluminium fluoride plants in Bell Bay, Tasmania.

The process to produce hydrogen fluoride has been operated at pilot scale in a batch reactor

ALCORE has achieved a maximum 97% fluorine recovery using the bath pilot batch reactor, improving on previous best of 93%, a result which was already deemed very likely to be sufficient in a commercial plant.  

The next stage is to construct and operate a bath continuous pilot plant, the outcomes of which will be:

Selection of reactor designs and process conditions for the commercial plant

Production of saleable hydrogen fluoride for evaluation by customers

ALCORE has secured the support of Rio Tinto and the Tasmanian Government to locate the pilot plant in an existing industrial facility adjacent to the Bell Bay aluminium smelter in northern Tasmania

The metal sulfates can potentially be sold as a single industrial chemical, or further processed into multiple industrial chemicals. A range of options is being assessed.