Kurri Kurri aluminium smelter

The Kurri Kurri aluminum smelter - took Kurri Kurri in 1969, a city in the Hunter Region of New South Wales, Australia, its aluminum production. It is operated lodge with an annual capacity of 180,000 tons of aluminum from the Kurri Kurri Pty Limited since 2002, when she took over the global Norwegian company Hydro Aluminium Group of VAW aluminum AG to 100 percent.

Hydro Aluminium has invested 2005 AUD 40 million to the investments of the aluminum smelter renew, while the emissions should be minimized and have been increased by 6,000 tons of aluminum capacity.

Aluminum smelters are large industrial plant, which produced in the smelting electrolysis in energy-intensive aluminum from alumina. In Hall-Héroult process, pure aluminum is obtained above the melting electrolysis of alumina. In this case, alumina is mixed with a melt temperature of 2045 ° C and cryolite, in order to lower the melting temperature. In this process, the melting temperature can be lowered to 950 ° C, allowing the electrolysis. This smelter is, like all such huts, 365 days in operation and can not be easily turned off completely and approached at a later time.

After one of the three production lines of the plant was shut down in January 2012, which Norsk Hydro ASA announced in June 2012, the closure of the Kurri Kurri hut against a background of global overcapacity of primary aluminum and a strong Australian dollar, among which suffered the profitability of the plant for a long time had.