ABx Group (ASX: ABX) has commissioned its state-of-the-art bath pilot batch reactor and successfully commenced operations at its 83%-owned subsidiary ALCORE’s technology centre located on the NSW Central Coast.
The reactor has been designed for the recovery of fluorine from ‘excess bath’ (an aluminium smelter waste) to produce hydrogen fluoride, with a later-stage commercial plant to further react the hydrogen fluoride to produce aluminium fluoride – a high-value chemical essential for aluminium smelting.
Initial reactor operations have processed excess bath using modified process conditions, selected to provide greater safety and certainty that the reactor will perform as expected.
Pleasingly, the first run successfully demonstrated the potential of the reactor with operations proceeding without issue and hydrogen fluoride produced.
Following the successful production of hydrogen fluoride, the Company undertook a hazard and operability (HAZOP) study, which reviewed all of the processes undertaken throughout the initial operations to ensure the safety and efficacy of the reactor operations.
The HAZOP study was an important precursor to operations using the standard process conditions, which stipulates a specific set of temperature ranges, residence times and amounts of acid.
Tests using standard process conditions have commenced, with first results on the reactor performance and bath process yield anticipated in December.
The successful commissioning of the reactor and subsequent production of hydrogen fluoride from excess bath is a fantastic result for ALCORE,” Managing Director and CEO Mark Cooksey said.
“While using modified conditions, these results provide the technical validation required to proceed with further processing activities.
“Processing of bath using our new reactor will provide important data on our ability to produce greater yields, at roughly ten times the scale of our smaller laboratory reactor, where much of our work has been focused to date.
“Results from this new reactor are expected to provide more robust data which will be used to eventually scale-up operations to a continuous pilot plant and first commercial plant”.