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Isn't it immensely difficult to restart an aluminum smelter? Also, my vague memory of these is that in North America most of them are in areas with abundant hyd
by s0rce 6y ago
Isn't it immensely difficult to restart an aluminum smelter? Also, my vague memory of these is that in North America most of them are in areas with abundant hydro power.
- tpmx 6y agoProbably. I just picked something at random that I know uses a lot of power - I think in the order of one nuclear reactor for a typical installation. Should have known better than to do that here.
- sjg007 6y agoThey can probably run at lower power? I imagine you slow everything down. After all you just have to melt it again.
- askvictor 6y agoSome designs can be stopped and started easily; others get into big trouble if they're shut down abruptly.
- wavesquid 6y agoThey're immensely difficult to restart once the aluminium solidifies: difficult enough that the answer is throw it out and make a new one. But there's a big enough difference between operational temperatures and solid that you can deprive them of electricity for e.g. 8 hours while you restart your other power generation infrastructure. IIRC for some aluminium smelters you can even run the reaction in reverse briefly if you need to jump start something. (citations needed.... I'm recalling this from a story someone told me ~15 years ago about the Alcoa plant in Victoria, Australia)
- foepys 6y agoI recently watched a documentary about aluminum smelting and this topic came up. An engineer said that they have a 6 hours time frame. If the power doesn't come back on, the aluminum hardened too much and all smelters are lost forever. There is no possibility for on-site generators because the required generator would be the size of a power plant.
- oasisbob 6y agoYou can refresh your vague memories - all of Alcoa's west-coast aluminum industry is long-gone. The waves of Enron took out most of them decades ago when its destruction rolled through the energy markets. IIRC, the last NW aluminum smelter closed a few years ago.
- s0rce 6y agoI was remembering a bunch in Quebec. Not sure where all the hydro power in the pnw goes. Was nice to have cheaper power when I lived up there though!