Alufluor AB, based in Landskrona, Sweden, is one of the few European producers of aluminium fluoride, a key material used in aluminium smelting. The company’s Technical Director, Dan Turesson, discusses how Alufluor is exploring new ways to improve the efficiency and sustainability of its production processes through the iWAYS project.
By testing technologies such as heat pipe economizers and water recovery systems, Alufluor aims to reduce energy use, cut emissions, and limit its dependence on municipal water. In this interview, Turesson explains the role of these innovations, the challenges facing the aluminium fluoride industry, and how collaboration within iWAYS supports the development of more resource-efficient industrial practices.
What is your role in Alufluor?
Dan Turesson: I’m the Technical Director of Alufluor, the only producer of aluminium fluoride in Sweden and one of only a few producers in Europe.
How is aluminium fluoride produced?
Dan Turesson: Aluminium fluoride contains two components: the fluoride component and the aluminium component.
There are two different techniques of producing aluminium fluoride. One is using virgin raw material, and the other is using a byproduct from phosphoric acid, which is a fertilizer component. We are using the byproduct way, which is the more sustainable way of producing aluminium fluoride. The majority of producers are using the virgin production method.Aluminium fluoride with virgin raw material has a higher density than the one using fluorosilicate acid, which is the raw material we are using.
What is Alufluor’s role in iWAYS project?
Dan Turesson: Our role in iWAYS as a chemical business is to test and evaluate this new technique of using heat pipes as a single component, where we will recover energy and a bit of the raw material. The heat pipe condensing economizer will also be a part of our emission reduction system.
Then we have the water recovery system where we will recover water that normally would be sent to the sewer system. Instead of using the municipal water, we will reuse water in our scrubber systems.
What do you see as the main challenge in aluminum fluoride production?
Dan Turesson: Of course, we’re not the only producer. For the moment there’s excess aluminum fluoride on the market, so it’s a challenging situation for everyone.
Sustainability is growing; it’s a huge part of our DNA and has always been.
What do you see the future of aluminium fluoride production in Sweden?
Dan Turesson: We see that aluminum fluoride production will move from using virgin raw material to fluorosilicic acid, because there is a lot of fluorosilicic acid that today in goes to the sea in the world; not in Europe, but in the rest of the world. So, the new production units that are built up and producing aluminium fluoride will be produced from fluorosilicate acid instead. That means it will be produced where the silicic acid is plentiful, which is usually countries outside of Europe.
Can you explain the role of water in the production of aluminium fluoride?
Dan Turesson: In our process we use clean water to wash both the material that is produced – aluminium fluoride – and also the equipment we are using. We use a lot of hot municipal water for that.
We consume energy to make this hot water, though with iWAYS a large part of that energy will be taken from the heat pipe instead. We will heat up the water using the heat pipe, taking that heat from the processed gases.
On the water recovery side, we use also a lot of water in our scrubbers; all processed these gases are going through scrubber systems to reduce the emissions. Instead of municipal water we will clean the water that we have treated, but we will make an extra treatment of it so we can reuse it in our scrubber system instead of taking municipal water. We will save a lot of municipal water in that way and reuse water.
How could erase technologies make the production of these elements more efficient and sustainable?
Dan Turesson: The main part of the heat pipe condensing system is that it will transfer the heat energy from our process gases that are going out and move that to the cleaning water to heat it.
The heat pipe will then also collect some of the emissions that would otherwise go out; it’s an extra step for us in our emission control.
Then we can reduce the municipal water usage. Those are the three big parts in this project for us.
What are the key achievements within iWAYS so far?
Dan Turesson: We have still some projects that have to be finalised so we can get the full potential out of this heat pipe. That said, we have been running it for a couple of months now, and it has worked very well; we have gotten the energy transformation from the gas to the water, and we have also seen emissions reductions. Now with the projects that are we are finalising, we will see even better results and we will achieve the goals that we set in the iWAYS project.
What is the benefit of being a partner in the iWAYS project?
Dan Turesson: Entering a product like iWAYS is of course a huge commitment for a small company like Alufluor because we are only 50 people, and our technical team is only around five.
We’re fortunate in that a project like iWAYS is has like-minded people developing new techniques and materials that we would never have the resources to do. We also have the possibility to have material tested in different environments.
Not everything is on one partner in the project, it’s several partners that are working together to complete the full potential of the iWAYS concept using the resources we have. Of course, there’s some extra administration than a standalone project, though that’s typical of being in a big project, and we hope that we can finalise everything successfully.