INFUTURE - Hydro Aluminium Innovations for Profitable and Sustainable Future

This project shall contribute to secure Hydro Aluminium position as a national and international aluminium producer and strengthen Hydro's position as a world leader in development of outstanding technology for sustainable and profitable production of primary aluminium. This project is expected to enable Hydro smelters to run with better energy consumption and environmental performance than today. Innovations will be developed that improves process stability and environmental impact (increased cell life, less emissions and waste). Main research partners are SINTEF and IFE. Somewhat behind plan with respect to full scale testing of new concepts. Development of new models is good and close to plan.

The main objective is to: Develop and demonstrate innovations needed to further improve world-leading energy efficient and to improve profitability and sustainability for Hydro’s primary aluminium production. This project shall contribute to secure Hydro’s position as a national and international aluminium producer and strengthen Hydro's position as a world leader in development of outstanding technology for sustainable production of primary aluminium. Aluminium electrolysis technologies have effective lives of typically 50-70 years and developments largely takes place by continuous improvement, as can be exemplified by Hydro's in-house developed technologies for electrolysis. New processes are emerging, but will take time to industrialize on a large scale for the simple reason that there already are huge investments tied up in existing Hall-Heroult technologies; therefore innovations for the a sustainable future is still a necessity for the Hall-Heroult production technology. The project is divided into 4 work packages, all targeting novel technology and fundamental knowledge needed to build process stability and improved materials usage in support of improved energy efficiency. Main partners are SINTEF and IFE.