Commissioning of Nalco's alumina refinery expansion begins

Navratna PSU Nalco's Rs 4,402 crore expansion plan to raise alumina refinery capacity from 1.575 million tonnes to 2.1 million tonnes are at advance stages of commissioning, company sources said today.

The National Aluminium Company Ltd (Nalco) has started commissioning various expanded capacities of its alumina refinery at Damanjodi, including cogeneration power plant, evaporation plant, stacker and bauxite circuit for production of alumina.

Other packages in the plant are now under advance stage of commissioning, company sources said today.

Under the second phase expansion Nalco is enhancing its Alumina Refinery capacity from 1.575 million tonnes to 2.1 million tonnes, they said.

Further, the company has ordered equipment to upgrade the total alumina capacity to 2.275 million tonnes under its fourth stream upgradation programme.

Earlier, the 4th potline of NALCO’s Smelter Plant and the 9th & 10th units of its Captive Power Plant, both located at Angul, were commissioned.

The work at Refinery in Damanjodi lagged after the Maoist attack there in April 2009, when several contractors and their workers left the place. Some works were then off-loaded to other contractors.

While bauxite mining capacity after second phase expansion is proposed to be raised to 63,00,000 tpa, aluminium smelter capacity would go up to 4,60,000 tpa and that of captive power plant to 1200 MW, sources said.