Scale-up and demonstration of Recyclamet, a novel system for the closed loop recovery of metal and value added residues from waste aluminium slag and drosses

"With global aluminium consumption set to reach 120M tonnes by 2025, aluminium production and recycling are large and important global industries. Slag and drosses are hazardous residual wastes from the aluminium smelting industry; historically, after treatment for metal recovery, the residue was landfilled but landfill is no longer permitted by EU waste regulations. While some metal can be recovered at specialist processing plants, it is extremely expensive with very high-energy burden and requires hazardous and toxic waste to be transported across Europe, making recovery uneconomic, but necessary. Closed-loop processing is a key driver and an industry-strategic objective of aluminium smelting, enabling maximum metal recovery, cost savings, efficiency gains, greater materials control, minimisation of hazardous outputs and a reduced carbon footprint.

This project will scale up and demonstrate a novel system developed and patented by Ultromex Limited to radically improve the resource efficiency of aluminium production from aluminium dross (a major constituent of aluminium recycling) by the closed loop upgrading of dross, recovery of metal and salts from the greatly reduced volumes of slag waste and conversion of residual solids into product-grade material (cement aggregates and asphalt in tarmac). This is a front-running technology with confirmed interest and demand from many of the large aluminium smelters including project partner Tandom Metallurgical Group.

The Recyclamet system offers a solution to the industry's waste disposal challenge and a radical economic enhancement of the overall metal production process. The technology is aimed to have a relatively low CAPEX/OPEX requirement and moderate physical footprint which will allow for plants to be built in situ with the smelters. This will allow for speedy recycling and recovery of \>90% of available metal (of known alloy) and furnace salts, removing the need for transporting hazardous material across the EU, minimising landfill and reducing transport, storage and processing costs, and producing safe solid materials (non-metallic particles - NMP) for other value added applications."