Potroom HF Emission Reduction by Anode Inert Tray Technology Performance of ALRO Industrial 1st of Class

Today, in the electrolysis area of modern aluminium smelters, treatment of pot gas emissions has been drastically improved by the latest generation of dry scrubbing technologies, with efficiency rates close to 99.8%. As a consequence, stack emissions now only represent a very small amount of the total fluorides emitted over the entire smelter. Most of the HF is released to the atmosphere directly from the potroom, where in many smelters no specific treatment is provided to limit emissions related to pot maintenance activities (pot hoods opening, spent anodes removal, etc.). FIVES SOLIOS now proposes a solution to eliminate emissions coming from hot spent anodes stored in potroom thanks to an Anode Inert Tray (AIT) designed to confine anode butts. This paper presents the results of the industrial first of class AIT, developed conjointly between FIVES SOLIOS and FIVES ECL and which has been operated by ALRO for several months.