EGA’s Al Taweelah smelter running half of its reduction cells
Emirates global aluminium has restarted half of the reduction cells at its Al Taweelah smelter in Abu Dhabi, UAE. So far, 631 of the 1,262 reduction cells at Al Taweelah have been restarted.
The smelter entered emergency shutdown on 28 March when an Iranian attack on Khalifa Economic Zone Abu Dhabi led to a full evacuation of the Al Taweelah site. EGA teams are progressively restoring and restarting each reduction cell, working along the three potlines at Al Taweelah in parallel.
Following the emergency shutdown, molten aluminium froze in every reduction cell at Al Taweelah, leaving solid metal pads weighing up to 45 tonnes to be removed. Almost 80% of reduction cells can then be restarted.
The remaining reduction cells require repairs, potlining demolition and relining, based on the duration the reduction cells had been operating before the incident.
Compared to the normal rolling maintenance programme, EGA has more than tripled its capacity to safely repair and restart reduction cells at Al Taweelah through optimising workflows, adding equipment, strengthening people capability, and creating new industrial processes.
During the restoration, EGA has accelerated the deployment of a pilot technology at Al Taweelah that would otherwise have required operating reduction cells to be shutdown during construction.
The pilot E40 upgrades to 13 DX technology reduction cells, which will be used to prove the performance of the technology before industrialisation across all 808 DX technology cells at Al Taweelah.
If applied to all DX reduction cells, EGA’s E40 technology has the potential to increase hot metal production by 67,000 tonnes per year.
In addition, the Al Taweelah alumina refinery continues to produce alumina at approximately 50% capacity.
While the refinery is technically ready to ramp-up further, timing will be based on supply chain dynamics and the optimisation of EGA’s alumina sourcing strategy.
