The optimization of soaking time to reduce fuel consumption while keeping good baked anode quality

Abstract

To become a world-class company, INALUM should increase its competitiveness, and one of the strategies is reduction of production cost. Anode production cost is one of the largest cost contributors for aluminum production. In such a way the optimization of soaking time was applied by using baking curve of fire progression (FP) 30 h instead of the curves of FP 32, 34 and 36 h. By this method and based on actual data, including measurement of anode temperature, fuel consumption reduced by 5.05 L/ton Baked Block (BB) which leads to saving of fuel consumption of up to 578 m3/year while still maintaining good anode quality. Moreover, it could improve the effectiveness of pit cover change duration from 15 to 10 min (33%) and it was simultaneously reducing the generated CO2 emission up to 9.3 kg (7.7%) due to reduced fuel consumption.