Phil Black shares his thoughts of what a sustainable aluminium world would look like after attending the 2016 AluSolutions conference.

"We can hardly imagine the technological advances that may take place in next ten years, let alone thirty years. But, our visions for the future, our dreams, can drive us to innovate and to take new paths towards sustainability in a technologically advanced world.

While attending the AluSolutions 2016 conference, I was inspired by the many and varying views of future sustainable practices."

Phil specifically mentions the ability for smelters to modulate to fit in with a renewable energy grid.

About EnPot he says, "in my opinion, the EnPot concept hits a number of home runs for the smelting industry:

(a) it is able to be retrofitted safely on any number of cells whilst in operation (depending on bus and flex configuration),

(b) it is possible to tune each setup to the individual pot performance, and there is potential for automation of such tuning;

(c) it opens up another dimension for coordination with power companies, which really must be in intimate contact with smelters about their energy needs and availability of excess power in these resource-hungry times.

For some smelters and governments, EnPot may be a life-saver."