42nd International Conference and Exhibition ICSOBA 2024

Sunday, 27 October 2024

Espace Alu

On Sunday, 27 October, in between the Short Courses and the ICSOBA 2024 Conference & Exhibition, a full day Memorial Trip took place to the Maurienne Valley, with 53 participants. Situated 1.5 h drive from Lyon the Valley has made a huge impact on the development of the aluminium manufacture. The Maurienne valley has been and still is a major place for aluminium production. In the Maurienne Valley seven aluminium production factories were built between 1892 and 1907 between Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne and La Praz, that were among the earliest implementations of a newly discovered electrochemical process to manufacture large quantities of the metal. From the end of the nineteenth century to the 1980s, the Maurienne was considered the "Valley of Aluminium".

Participants in the trip were able to see the remains of the old power stations, some elements of hydroelectric production and a house inhabited by Paul Héroult. The trip not only highlighted the historical sites but also included a visit of the Aluminium Museum of Saint-Michel-de-Maurienne. In 2007, the town hall of Saint-Michel-de-Maurienne inaugurated the Espace Alu, the first and only museum in the world entirely dedicated to aluminium.

Thursday, 31 October 2024

Aluminium Dunkerque

France's latest major primary aluminum smelter, Aluminium Dunkerque specializes in the manufacture of slabs and ingots, in a wide variety of alloys, for high value-added applications in the automotive, transport and packaging sectors.

The foundry was built in France in the 1990s, right next to the Gravelines nuclear power plant, which supplies it with carbon-free energy.

The architect who designed the plant was inspired by the surrounding sand dunes and provided a tree-lined central patio, the starting point for the operational areas - and for the visit!

The tour took 48 participants through the 3 production departments:

• In the Carbon department, they passed through the automated anode storage area and get a glimpse of the baking furnace.
• In the Reduction department, equipped with 264 AP30 pots powered at 400 kA, overhead travelling cranes can move from one hall to another thanks to a conveyor crane.
• In the Casting shop, they saw 3 vertical direct-casting machines and an ingot line, 7 furnaces supplying a capacity of 300 kt/year in rolling slabs and foundry ingots.

Already one of the world's leading producers of low-carbon aluminum, Aluminium Dunkerque is accelerating its energy and environmental transition with its ambitious decarbonization project called LowCAl : this Low Carbon Aluminium strategy was presented during the conference.

Thursday, 31 October 2024

Alteo Gardanne

The Alteo Gardanne Alumina refinery is located approximatively at 320 km from Lyon. The program included a return trip from Lyon using the TGV high speed train.

44 ICSOBA participants were given a brief overview of the refinery, its industrial transformation and company's commitment to environmental sustainability. Participants were able to appreciate the scale and complexity of the refinery during a bus tour. This bus tour offered participants a unique opportunity to immerse themselves in the history of alumina by discovering the plant - the cradle of the Bayer process - which has been operating in Gardanne for 130 years.

Mange Garri

Rio Tinto offered a tour of its historic bauxite residue storage center, operating as a lagooning from 1900 to 1970, then as a dry-storage from 2006 until its rehabilitation in 2022. The unique feature of this center, located 4 km from the alumina refinery, is its location between 2 valleys that were initially filled to store these residues. The evolution of this site is amazing, particularly over the last 5 years with the creation of rainfall recovery pond and the profiling and composting of the storage compartement.

Thursday, 31 October 2024

Trimet France

39 participants of ICSOBA took advantage of the field trip to Trimet France aluminium smelter on the last day of the conference.

The Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne smelter started in 1907, its location being due to the development of hydroelectric power generation in the Alpine valleys. Today, it is one of the oldest aluminium smelters in the world still in operation. It has been now 11 years since the German family-owned aluminium producer TRIMET took over the historical French production sites of Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne and Castelsarrasin from Rio Tinto.

During the Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne smelter visit, the participants saw the anode baking furnace, the baked anode slot machining facility, the casthouse with its state of the art wire casting/manufacturing facility and saw the historical F and G demonstration potlines where the AP18 and AP30 technologies were respectively demonstrated.