<
https://reneweconomy.com.au/why-do-we-bother-australia-cant-compete-with-chinas-green-transition-but-it-can-leverage-its-success/>
"The scale, proximity of customers and even the carbon reduction efforts of
China’s huge aluminium smelters will make it very difficult for older, smaller,
less-integrated facilities like Tomago in NSW to compete, veteran energy
analyst Tim Buckley says.
Buckley, the head of Climate Energy Finance who returned recently to Australia
from his latest trip to China, said the “staggering” scale of manufacturing and
the speed of construction there put Australia’s $2.5 billion efforts to bail
out facilities such as Tomago in the shade.
The visit took in the Hongtai Aluminium smelter in the southern province of
Yunnan. Construction on the site began in December 2019, with the first metal
produced within a year.
Annual output is now 2.03 million tonnes, the most for any single site in the
world, or triple Tomago’s yearly production of about 590,000 tonnes.
Buckley said he travelled with an Australian advisor to the Yunnan smelter’s
owner, China Hongqiao Group. “I don’t know why we bother,” the advisor, a
former head of the International Aluminium Institute, told him.
Construction of smelter’s giant transformer – able to accommodate the
equivalent of about a third of NSW’s average power load – was built in a year.
The surrounding industrial park also included a huge carbon anode factory and
eight different aluminium providing both inputs and making use of the smelter’s
production – in one site.
That proximity meant, for instance, that hot aluminium at 800 degrees Celsius
can supplied directly to users, avoiding the energy wastage of letting it cool
only to be reheated later.
“They said they saved about 5% to 10% of the energy needs, and they gave me the
data to show it,” Buckley said. “Tomago is sitting there in isolation. It, like
most aluminium smelters, delivers product cooled down to room temperature.”
Hongqiao says its smelters use less energy per tonne of aluminium output."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
