Faist Mekatronic plans to build a smelter for green aluminium, but its price, being 1 euro per kilogram higher than that obtained by traditional methods, meets resistance from customers, said Mihai Lasca, Engineering Manager at the company.
“Everyone is now asking for green aluminium, which is not hard to get, but it is more expensive than what we buy from our producers. Everyone wants green, but they don’t want to pay for it,” Lasca said, at the conference “Digitalization and Energy Efficiency – Oradea”, organised by Energynomics, together with the Italian Chamber of Commerce for Romania – CCIpR.
Faist Mekatronic has already solicited bids from equipment suppliers for the construction of this 1,500 tonne per year melter.
According to Lasca, the investment should be made outside Oradea and should be completed with a 3 MW photovoltaic park and a 3 MWh storage system.
The cost of a kilogram of green aluminium would rise by 1 euro to 3.2 euros from the current 2.2 euros, which is “quite a lot”.
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He also detailed efficiency gains through the introduction of semi-solid casting. In terms of carbon footprint, this process is more advantageous because it has lower emissions and is more energy efficient. Fewer defects occur and the amount of waste is substantially reduced. Finally, as less post-turning processing is needed, the time required for chipping is significantly reduced. From an energy consumption perspective, the advantages of semi-solid casting are the lower melting temperature, reduced cooling time and efficient use of raw material.
Faist Mekatronic is also planning to implement a system for preheating aluminium alloy ingots using hot air recovered from central melting furnaces. This can reduce gas consumption by about 10% and CO2 emissions by 529 tonnes per year.
The conference “Digitalization and energy efficiency – Oradea” was organized by Energynomics with the support of the Italian Chamber of Commerce for Romania – CCIpR, and of our partners: ADC, BCR, Celestica, CRC Energy, Datacor, Fortza.ro, ICAP CRIF, Intesa Sanpaolo Bank, Photon Energy, Polytrade Global, Unicredit Bank, WALDEVAR Energy.