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ARENA Backs Planned Heat Storage at Yarwun Refinery

lite News Desk 1 min read

A thermal storage project planned for Rio Tinto’s Yarwun alumina refinery near Gladstone in Queensland would receive funding in stages from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA), with deployment support dependent on a successful engineering study. The proposed system would supply heat for steam used in refinery operations, according to the agency.

ARENA said electricity would be converted into heat for storage, then released as required to produce steam. The demonstration would examine the technology’s performance within an operating industrial facility and assess whether it could reduce fossil-fuel consumption. Those are objectives for the planned project, rather than demonstrated operating results at Yarwun.

The proposed installation would store 360 megawatt-hours of thermal energy, according to ARENA. Its design provides for an electrical charging input of 78 megawatts and heat delivery at 30 megawatts of thermal output.

For the initial stage, ARENA said it would provide $3.6 million to undertake front-end engineering and design. Successful completion of that study is a condition for a further allocation of up to $38 million towards deployment.

Separate contingency support of up to $33.3 million has also received ARENA approval. Access to that funding is restricted to defined circumstances involving specified project risks, including expenditure above budget and electricity costs; it is not an unconditional project allocation.

ARENA puts the potential reduction in emissions at the refinery at approximately 67,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year. That figure is an estimate of what the project could achieve, not a measured reduction from the planned installation.

The agency said alumina production requires substantial quantities of steam at high temperatures on a continuous basis, with fossil fuels historically supplying the heat. ARENA describes reducing emissions from industrial process heat as difficult.

* This article is based on publicly available information at the time of writing.

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