VANCOUVER (miningweekly.com) – Quebec clean-technology firm Orbite Technologies continues to make progress towards achieving the calcination stage of its high-purity alumina (HPA) plant, through which it will "soon" be producing ultra-pure alumina, the company said Thursday.
The TSX-listed innovator said feedstock digestion continued to operate automatically and smoothly at the HPA plant, in Cap-Chat, and digestion liquors continued to be transferred to the crystallisation circuit to produce aluminium chloride hexahydrate (ACH) crystals, the precursor to HPA.
In preparation for the calcination of the produced ACH into HPA, Orbite continues to produce amorphous HPA to constitute the initial 'bed' in the fluidised bed decomposer and calciner. This HPA is produced using the company's legacy low-capacity Harper decomposer and production of the bed material continues to progress positively, Orbite stated.
The heating up sequence of the decomposer and calciner reactors has started and is progressing well. The company expects to be able to introduce the required quantity of bed material into the new calcination system soon, which will be followed by the calcination of ACH into HPA.