The $600M potline has a capacity of 166kt/y and is predicted to produce 156.7kt of aluminium in 2010.
Now the new potline is up and running, the company will decommission the least effective potline, No. 2.
Potline 5 has been built on a new site consisting of two potrooms with a total of 200 cells operated at 300kAmps.
The smelting process is based on an up-to-date pre-baked anode technology, which has demo-nstrated excellent technical and environmental performance.
The process will be backed by new dry scrubbers capturing 99.5% of fluoride emissions and carbon dust, and also a closed-loop water system, a silicon rectifier and anode-rodding facilities.
To meet the needs of the smelter, a new casthouse (Casthouse 3) was built to meet the needs of the extra capacity.
The first part of Casthouse 3 was brought into service in September 2009 and ships commodity metal to customers in the construction, aviation, cable and car manufacturing industries.
The design and engineering were performed by the Rusal’s engineering and construction division.
It is taking a three-pronged approach to the modernisation: improvement of environmental parameters at the existing operations, greenfield projects to be equipped with the best available technologies and equipment, and, a gradual replacement of obsolete capacities with modern ones, as is the case at IrkAZ.