Analysis of the electrolytic aluminum industry

From January to November 2012, China's primary aluminum output was 18.15 million tons, with a slight decline in the output compared with the same period last year. The serious excess capacity had been alleviated. By the end of October, more than half of the target of eliminating backward production capacity of 270,000 tons had been completed.

Present, electrolytic aluminium enterprises should avoid blind to expand capacity, the original industrial advantage into profitability, use of existing resources, in terms of the original advantage on joint coal, smelting, processing, and formed a complete industrial chain, will do big enterprise scale, production capacity and stronger, to do the processing technology, has become an important goal of electrolytic aluminium enterprise.

After more than 60 years of development, the electrolytic aluminum industry in new China has made great achievements in all aspects, but it is also faced with many challenges and problems, which must be properly solved, otherwise, it will be detrimental to the development of the next step.

Excess capacity

By the end of 2013, China's primary aluminum production capacity has exceeded 32000kt/a, which is a rather frightening figure, must be put on a brake, can no longer develop, in the domestic development of aluminum electrolysis industry this carriage can no longer be so rattling whip, singing the song of the wind all the way running wild.To develop abroad, to the relatively rich resources and energy to mining bauxite, alumina extraction and production of remelting aluminum ingots, to establish joint ventures or wholly owned enterprises, the product will be shipped back to the country.The amount of aluminium profile and aluminum products like aluminium window systems or aluminium door systems exported by 2020 is processed with imported remelted aluminum ingots, rather than equivalent to imported aluminum resources (bauxite, alumina, scrap aluminum).By 2030, about 50% of the aluminum ingots used for remelting for domestic apparent consumption will be imported.The train of thought of developing primary aluminum electrolysis industry in Japan, Korea and Taiwan of China is worth our reference, and the practice of the United States and a few countries in Europe also has something to learn.

Go out to develop aluminum resources have risks, some places of risk is very big, may need to "pay a certain amount of tuition", pay tuition may be inevitable, strive for less intersection point.Countries such as Japan all shut down domestic aluminium production (Japan still retains a production capacity of 15 kt/a urahara aluminium factory, the factory use of Mount Fuji, a small hydropower station, electric power, power station is aluminum plant construction, urahara aluminum smelters will aluminium segregation method was used to extract high purity aluminum , to reduce the pollution to the environment), and for nearly 30 years, industrial developed countries such as America, Germany has reduced production of primary aluminum, such as large aluminum company aluminium production at home some drops, and outside the enterprise's production rose by more than 35%.

In 2013, the world's per capita aluminum consumption (calculated by 7 billion people and 51,400kt primary aluminum consumption) was 7.34 kg/person, while China's per capita aluminum consumption (calculated by 1.35 billion people and 25500kt primary aluminum consumption) was 18.89 kg/person, which was far more than the world's average consumption, 2.57 times of it, and close to the 21.4 kg/person of the industrial developed countries.Our main task is to improve the quality of raw material consumption and do as much as possible with as little raw material consumption as possible.The scale of the country should not be expanded any more. We can take measures of "decreasing the east and increasing the west, reducing the fire and increasing the water".[4]

Technical challenges

Although the cell capacity of some electrolytic aluminum plants in China has caught up with or exceeded the world leading level, the technical and economic indexes of the same type of cell are still relatively backward compared with the advanced level of foreign countries.The anode effect coefficient of electrolytic cell is high in Chinese electrolytic aluminum plants.Tons of aluminum power consumption is higher than the leading level in Europe;The average tank life is generally short;The current efficiency of foreign advanced level has reached 96%, while the current efficiency of more than 75% enterprises in China is only 92.5-93.5%, and the rectification efficiency of a considerable number of factories is undercalculated.Under the same power consumption condition, the anode current density design of China's electrolytic cell is only 0.7-0.735A/cm2, which means that the output of the same unit area of electrolytic cell is low. Therefore, in the coming period of time, one of the main tasks of China's aluminum electrolytic cell is to maximize the output per unit area of electrolytic cell.

At present, China has many advantages in developing electrolytic aluminum industry. For example, the unit product investment of electrolytic aluminum plant is low, which is about 1/3 of that of industrialized countries.The labor cost is low, which is 1/5-1/4 of the corresponding labor cost in the primary aluminum cost of industrial developed countries.The environmental protection requirements are low, so the investment in environmental protection facilities is low, which should not be the case. It is time to increase investment in environmental protection.Thousands of provinces, can not save environmental protection, environmental protection standards should be raised, who do not meet the standard, should be shut down, environmental protection standards should become high voltage line