AlSiCal aims to revolutionize the industrial minerals sector by implementing a zero-waste and negative-to-zero CO2 emissions process that transforms anorthosite rock into valuable mineral products - alumina, silica, PCC alternatively CaO or wollastonite.
The idea of producing alumina and other products from non-bauxitic resources has been pursued in the past (largely during the 1970s´and 1980s´). Unfortunately the processes proposed at those times were not economically feasible or advantageous enough in key sustainability areas as to be fully developed and industrialized.
The AlSiCal proposal was initiated in late 2017, considering all the learnings from former attempts, unsolved challenges and gaps, and targeting innovative improvements to, finally, make it a realistic, up-scalable process. After signature of the Grant Agreement, AlSiCal´s kick off meeting was held in September 2019, setting a very good start for the project.
AlSiCal has invented, de-risked and develop (from TRL 2 to TRL 4-5) the AlSiCal technology under sustainability and efficiency principles. It has assessed and quantified the techno-economic feasibility, potential value creation for Europe, Life Cycle Analysis, impact and risks of this technology upon the key sustainability pillars: economy, society and environment. The achievements of the project are of great quality and potential impact: the AlSiCal project is acknowledged by all Consortium partners, external stakeholders and interested actors as “one of a kind” RIA-H2020 project, due to the large scope and the many innovations proposed and successfully developed, with special emphasis on the holistic approach of the work and the fruitful, interdisciplinary collaboration.
Socio-economic impact during the project implementation:
- AlSiCal has been performed by a balanced team of R&D and industrial partners representing the whole value chain, with remarkably good gender balance in all professional categories, especially considering how unbalanced is still the raw materials industry in general, and the scientific fields on focus in this project.
- Numerous jobs have been generated in the RTO teams for the implementation of the team, with the corresponding training of new experts.
- Targeted dissemination and communication actions have contributed to increased social and industrial engagement for developing innovative sustainable technologies for mineral processing.
Socio-economic impact expected from the project exploitation:
- The different partners have set a roadmap for exploitation of the project results.
- The new knowledge has became cutting-edge in hydrometallurgy and CO2 utilization innovation for more sustainable industry, to be used in spin-off projects and other value chains
- The AlSiCal technology has large potential to expand towards varied materials sources besides anorthosite.
- IFE has the will to pursue further upscaling and commercialization of the technology. Each AlSiCal plant for 1 Miotonne/year anorthosite input is expected to generate ca. 150 direct jobs and numerous indirect jobs.
AlSiCal has opened new avenues of innovation towards more sustainable raw materials industry, emphasizing the need - and great opportunity - to adapt or invent metallurgical processes into more sustainable ones, hopefully to become an industrial reality and have positive impact for generations to come.
