Bell Bay Aluminium Smelter
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The Bell Bay aluminium smelter is located on the
Tamar River The Tamar River, officially kanamaluka / River Tamar, is a estuary located in northern Tasmania, Australia. Despite being named a river, the waterway is a brackish and tidal estuary over its entire length. Etymology The Tamar River was named ...
at Bell Bay,
Tasmania Tasmania (; palawa kani: ''Lutruwita'') is an island States and territories of Australia, state of Australia. It is located to the south of the Mainland Australia, Australian mainland, and is separated from it by the Bass Strait. The sta ...
,
Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...
. The smelter has a production capacity of 178,000 tonnes of aluminium per year. It is owned and operated by Pacific Aluminium, a wholly owned subsidiary of
Rio Tinto Alcan Rio Tinto Alcan is a Canada-based mining company. Headquartered in Montreal, Quebec, it is a subsidiary of global mining conglomerate Rio Tinto. It was created on 15 November 2007 as the result of the merger between Rio Tinto's Canadian subsi ...
.


History

The Bell Bay smelter commenced production in 1955 as a joint venture between the Commonwealth and Tasmanian governments. The smelter was the first built in the Southern Hemisphere primarily to overcome difficulties importing aluminium during wartime. Bell Bay was chosen as the location because of the available hydroelectric power and deep water facilities. Rio Tinto Aluminium purchased the smelter in 1960, when production was about 12,000 tonnes per year. The original potline (Line 1) used
British Aluminium British Aluminium was an aluminium production company. It was originally formed as the British Aluminium Company Ltd on 7 May 1894 and was subsequently known as British Alcan Aluminium plc (1982-1996). History In the late 1880s and early 1890s ...
Söderberg technology. It was converted to use prebake anodes in 1965 and shut down in 1981.


Technology

The smelter currently comprises three potlines of
Kaiser Kaiser ( ; ) is the title historically used by German and Austrian emperors. In German, the title in principle applies to rulers anywhere in the world above the rank of king (). In English, the word ''kaiser'' is mainly applied to the emperors ...
P-57 reduction cells Line 2 and Line 3 were built in the early 1960s. Line 4 was built in two stages in the early 1980s.


See also

* Rio Tinto Aluminium *
Aluminium smelting Aluminium smelting is the process of extracting aluminium from its oxide, alumina, generally by the Hall-Héroult process. Alumina is extracted from the ore bauxite by means of the Bayer process at an alumina refinery. This is an electroly ...
*
List of aluminium smelters This is a list of primary aluminium smelters in the world. Primary production is the process by which alumina is smelted to pure aluminum. Secondary production is the process of recycling aluminum scrap into aluminum that can be used again. Capa ...


References


External links


Rio Tinto
corporate web site
Bell Bay in its element as aluminium smelter powers on
Bruce Mounster, 14 December 2013, The Mercury. Industrial buildings in Tasmania Aluminium smelters in Australia Alcan Energy crisis, 2016 1955 establishments in Australia {{Australia-struct-stub