ABx Group has made a significant breakthrough with its 83 percent-owned subsidiary, ALCORE. Recent independent analyses of samples from the latest runs of ALCORE's bath pilot batch reactor have confirmed the highest fluorine recoveries to date.
The reactor, which is part of the ALCORE Technology Centre on the NSW Central Coast, is designed to extract fluorine from an 'excess bath,' a byproduct of aluminium smelting, to produce hydrogen fluoride. This advancement marks a notable achievement in recovering and repurposing industrial waste, underscoring ABx Group's commitment to innovative and sustainable technologies.
Since commissioning the bath pilot batch reactor in October 2023, ALCORE has conducted numerous test runs, each involving around 10kg of bath and sulfuric acid. These tests have consistently improved fluorine recovery, reaching a maximum of 80 per cent initially and 88 per cent with further processing. After thorough data analysis and utilising detailed process understanding,
ALCORE designed rigorous experimental work to simulate the proposed second-stage reactor's performance under optimised conditions. Consequently, they achieved a maximum fluorine recovery of 93 per cent in the latest test runs, suggesting this level of recovery would likely meet commercial plant requirements. This also implies that the solid product obtained from these runs accurately represents what a future commercial plant would produce, facilitating expanded studies on its applications and further processing.
The next phase involves refining the continuous pilot plant reactor configuration based on these latest results and fine-tuning operating conditions. Due to its larger scale and optimised equipment design, ALCORE expects a slightly higher conversion rate in the continuous pilot plant.
Dr Mark Cooksey, the Managing Director and CEO of ABx Group, commented on the reactor performance, "Achieving over 90 per cent fluorine recovery in the latest test runs is a significant breakthrough for ALCORE and is a result of the sustained, high-level chemical engineering development conducted by the team. The results give us even more confidence that the process will perform as planned at a commercial scale."
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