OREANDA-NEWS. On 18 July 2008 UC RUSAL, the world’s largest aluminium and alumina producer, announced the commissioning of a dry scrubber at its Volgograd Aluminium Smelter (VgAZ). The installation, which cost the company over USD 12 mln, is the key element of the modernisation programme on this production site and is able to treat 99.5% of the total emissions level.

The hourly pass-through capacity of the new dry gas scrubber is over 250,000 m3 of gas and dust which are emitted by the reduction cells. The new unit manufactured by a Canadian contractor ensures that the minimal amount of noxious emissions go out of the chimneys or roof louvers and will replace 15 old foam scrubbers at the smelter. The new technology, which is widely used worldwide, is focused on one of the qualities of alumina, the key raw material for the smelting operations, allowing to adsorb fluorides and tarry substance. Almost 100% of the pollutants are contained and the fluorinated alumina is returned back to the process.

As part of this modernisation programme at VgAZ which was designed to enhance its environmental performance, all the cells have been converted to dry anodes, new filters were installed. Together with the recent commissioning of the new solid wastes storage, there are plans to redesign the jet ventilation by 2009.

The reduction of the environmental impact is a key priority for UC RUSAL. Since 2000, the production sites, which today are part of the UC RUSAL Group, have spent over USD 1 bln on their environmental initiatives.  In 2007-2013, UC RUSAL will invest approximately USD 1.4 bln in a comprehensive environmental improvement programme, which has been presented by the company to its aluminium smelters with the view of bringing down significantly the emissions level and provide for an increased production efficiency. The programme will cover the two world’s largest aluminium smelters in Bratsk and Krasnoyarsk and also smaller production facilities of the company located in Irkutsk, Novokuznetsk, Bogoslovsk and Uralsk where the company’s engineers are currently converting the process at some production areas to the pre-bake anode technology.  As a result of these efforts by 2015, the company intends to reduce the emissions by 35%. 

In 2007 UC RUSAL signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the United Nations Development Programme to step up the joint efforts aimed at a greenhouse gas emissions reduction, thus becoming the first Russian company to join the UNDP for the purpose of creating a global network of the projects focused to pursue one goal which is to prevent the threat of the global warming.