Novelis has announced a successful test of hydrogen fuel being used to power a recycling furnace at its UK plant in Warrington.
Carried out as part of the Industrial Fuel Switching Competition, the tests were conducted alongside Progressive Energy and saw the installation of new burners, regenerators and furnace lining material, leading to a 90% reduction in CO2e emissions when operating a melting furnace with hydrogen rather than natural gas.
A series of tests were carried out with different percentages of hydrogen blended with natural gas, beginning with 30%, rising to 100%. The purpose of this was to evaluate the impact on existing infrastructure and equipment compatibility.
Several hundred tonnes of 3000 series scrap aluminium alloy were also remelted and cast into sheet ingots, with all relevant parameters then measured, assessing any impact on the product, process, operating environment and environmental emissions. Other Novelis plants in Europe will oversee further downstream processing, helping establish the real end-to-end parameters of a hydrogen-based, recycled alloy production process.
Once full post-trial evaluation and assessments have been completed, a report will then be released as part of the government’s Industrial Fuel Switching programme later in 2025.
