Ma'aden Alumina Refinery Project

Challenges

The project is the world’s largest fully-integrated aluminum complex.
Saudi Arabian Mining Company and Alcoa wanted to develop a greenfield integrated project, including a bauxite mine, alumina refinery, aluminum smelter, and “can sheet” rolling mill.
The alumina refinery was to produce 1.8 million tpa of smelter-grade alumina, with most product feeding an adjacent aluminum smelter.
Specific digestion technology was needed to minimize heater cleaning and maintenance commitments for the refinery located in sustained hot environmental conditions.

Solutions

Detailed design and construction-support-services contract was provided for the integrated digestion and evaporation facility.
Hatch's patented, innovative, proprietary "multi-cell" jacketed pipe-heater technology was selected for the refinery's digestion plant.
Developed the flow sheet concept for the digestion and evaporation facility, their design, and that of ancillary facilities.
Process, mechanical piping, electrical, and instrumentation engineers worked closely together on the design of the process areas and the core proprietary-technology equipment.

Highlights

Second-largest single-stream high-pressure Bayer plant in the world.
One of the highest-temperature plants of its kind in the world with digestion temperature at 270ºC.
Rigorous testwork program validated design improvements for jacketed pipe-heater mechanical design and fluid-dynamic performance of digesters.
In-house models balanced heat transfer, slurry and vapor flows, condensate quality, overall energy balance requirements, and more, to prevent highly erosive two-phase flow.

Project numbers

55 area-specific equipment management strategies
3,500 maintenance activities uploaded
585 work instructions and procedures for critical assets
15,000 refinery assets identified