Vedanta commissions first ever red mud powder plant

Vedanta Aluminium (VAL) has commissioned a red mud powder plant at its Lanjigarh alumina refinery in Kalahandi district. The plant is designed to separate water from red mud slurry and is the first ever such initiative by any alumina maker in the world, claimed the company.

“Vedanta alumina refinery has commissioned a project for producing red mud powder in a fully mechanised and automatic plant. This is the first of its kind project in the world which has been set up with an investment of approximately Rs 50 crore,” said Dr Mukesh Kumar, President and Chief Operating Officer (COO) of VAL.

Red mud slurry is obtained after alumina processing and is rich in iron, titanium, caustic soda. It can be used in various ways including production of building construction material such as bricks and cement after conversion into powder.

Although the alumina technology is more than 100 years old, no plant has ever attempted to use the waste product anywhere in the world. The waste material is simply dumped near the plant site, requiring a lot of land for storage.

Vedanta said the new plant will result in less consumption of caustic soda and also require less land for disposal of the red mud.   

“Besides numerous advantages, the system will reduce caustic consumption by 10-15 Kg per tonne of alumina, bring down land requirement by 50-60 per cent, eliminate wet red mud storage, thus reduce pollution threats,” the company said in a statement.

As the slurry is alkaline in nature and its generation is nearly one and a half time of alumina, world over several billion tonnes of red mud is lying in various red mud ponds. Such ponds are vulnerable to earth movement and can create serious environmental threat. In India, most of the new projects were opposed mainly on this ground. Kumar said, the company has signed pacts with several institutions including CSIR laboratories in the country as well as State Pollution Control Board (SPCB), Odisha to develop more such technologies so that the refinery can be a zero waste refinery.