Increasing Holding Furnace Capacity from 30 to Be 40 Tons Molten Aluminium through Modification of Lining Design

Abstract

PT. Indonesia Asahan Aluminium (Persero) - hereinafter referred to as Inalum - is the pioneer of the Aluminium Smelter in the South East Asia region. It was designed by Sumitomo Chemical and started up in February 1982. The original capacity was 225,000 Tpy of ingot and 175 kA of amperage reduction cell and 30 Tons of Holding Furnace (HF) capacity in the casting house. Since operation commenced in 1982, only HF-706 had been modified to increase capacity to 36 Tons in 2007. Inalum has now successfully increased furnace capacity to be 40 Tons at HF-704 in October 2014. Improvement of HF-704 has been done through optimized lining design by new materials, an improved heat-up period, and optimized reconstruction time. The improvement is done to support the increasing of production up to 300,000 Tpy in 2019 followed by diversification of Aluminium product (100% of Aluminium Ingot to be 60% of Aluminium Ingot, 30% of Ingot Alloy and 10% of Billet).