Hall cell energy recovery and anode pre-heating, gauging the opportunity

Anode pre-heating was proposed as an alternative for recycling waste heat from smelting operations, which currently consume substantially more energy than the theoretical minimum required. Aside from direct electricity savings, anode pre-heating can provide extra metal production and reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Public data on energy and aluminum production is analyzed to examine the value of these three potential components and define a research development path. It is concluded that indirect process gains show the most potential value with economies on the order of 3 TWh per year in electricity, an avoidance of about 1.8 million metric tons of CO₂ emissions, and an increase in production capacity of about 200,000 metric tons of aluminum per year without any expansion of installed capacity.