Fire erupted at Rio Tinto's ISL aluminium smelter in Southwest Iceland, minor damage reported

Fire erupted at the Rio Tinto Alcan’s ISL aluminium smelter in Straumsvík, Southwest Iceland at night on September 3. According to Bjarni Már Gylfason, PR person for Rio Tinto in Iceland, workers managed to extinguish the fire without much injuries and minor damages. The fire erupted mainly at the outdoor and the company said did not have a bearing on its closed potline.

On Friday, August 30, two out of the 160 pots in its building number three were restarted, but they had been turned off for security reasons. The pots were closed since July 21, when an arc flash formed in one of them.  The smelter's annual aluminium capacity is about 212,000 tonnes per annum and about a third of the smelter’s production takes place in building three. The restarting phase is likely to take several months.

It was claimed that the arc flash formed in a pot because of the quality of alumina being used.

"Operations at the ISAL smelter have been impacted recently due to irregularities in raw material inputs," Matthew Klar, head of Rio Tinto Media Relations, Americas said to the press after the shutdown.

Bjarni said that it was too early to calculate the financial loss caused by the shutdown of the potline in building number three. But he assured that restarting process had begun and the recent fire had no impact on it.

A local media reported earlier that the financial cost of shutting down the building could run in the billions of Icelandic krónur.