Alcoa announced further progress on ELYSIS technology with Rio Tinto’s plans to launch the first industrial-scale demonstration of the breakthrough technology, which eliminates all greenhouse gas emissions from the traditional smelting process and produces oxygen as a byproduct.

Business Wire first reported the story.

Established in 2018, ELYSIS is a technology partnership between Alcoa and Rio Tinto, a British-Australian multinational company, which is the world's second largest metals and mining corporation, to advance technology first developed at the Alcoa Technical Center in New Kensington. Rio Tinto’s demonstration project will occur at Arvida in Quebec, Canada, and includes 10 ELYSIS smelting pots operating at 100  kiloamperesa size similar to those operating at smaller-scale commercial smelters.

Alcoa has the right to purchase up to 40% of the metal produced from the demonstration at Arvida, allowing for Alcoa customers to benefit from ELYSIS’s carbon-free electrolytic process early in the technology development cycle. The target for first production is by 2027.

First Published: June 28, 2024, 3:10 p.m.
Updated: June 28, 2024, 6:45 p.m.