TAHA’s aluminium dross process demonstrates 81% less GHG in comparison to the TRF method

Environmental considerations are becoming increasingly pertinent in “green” aluminium production making reducing or eliminating waste ever more so important. TAHA, a multi-discipline solutions provider with corporate offices in Bahrain, offers innovative, environmentally-friendly and cost-effective services, equipment and products to the aluminium and steel industry worldwide. TAHA’s aluminium dross process is a radical innovation in its industry whose process consumes less energy and produces no toxic salt cake. This enables organizations to save valuable resources and reduce costs.

From the outset, TAHA anticipated their operations to provide a dross processing solution with a lower carbon footprint than the conventional TRF (Tilting Rotary Furnace) process. Fully convinced internally that the TAHA process had a considerably reduced carbon footprint than the alternative process, TAHA recently requested Ernst and Young Netherlands to analyse and compare its operational carbon footprint to the conventional TRF process to evaluate and validate differences between both processes in an objective and conservative manner.

In order to provide detailed insights into the carbon footprint compared to the benchmark, TAHA, KMF and EY in collaboration with the Austrian Montanuniversität Leoben (in the renowned "ShanghaiRanking" in the category "Global Ranking of Academic Subjects", Montanuniversität was ranked 15th in the field of Metallurgical Engineering), analysed the carbon footprint of TAHA’s aluminium dross process utilizing a process life cycle assessment. The commissioned study was completed in February 2021, and the analysis demonstrates that the carbon footprint of TAHA’s method vastly outperforms the conventional TRF method, showing more than 81% less GHG emissions.

This comparison is intended to give further insights into the differences between the carbon footprint from TAHA's approach and the conventional TRF aluminium dross processing method and enables TAHA to further identify the carbon footprint hotspots in their process and to take focused actions on further limiting emissions.    

The carbon footprint calculation has followed the methodology stipulated by the Greenhouse Gas Protocol (GGP), which is globally appraised for its maturity on approaching carbon accounting. Consequentially, this entails that the results are structured into three scopes and that the presented greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions include all six gases as included in the Kyoto Protocol.

To create a fair and realistic benchmark, certain boundaries have been set in regards to the different aluminium dross processes. These boundaries include (1) transporting the machinery to its activity location, (2) energy consumption by the machinery and (3) supportive machinery, (4) maintenance, (5) transporting the (dross) product, (6) production footprint of auxiliary materials and (7) energy consumption in refining waste product.

The carbon footprint was calculated based on globally acknowledged emission factors. For scope 1 & 3, the emission factors from DEFRA and the Ecoinvent LCA database in SimaPro were used. In SimaPro the Greenhouse Gas Protocol (v1.02) was used to calculate the emission factors. For Scope 2, the emission factors from EPA were used. The carbon footprint was calculated for both the TAHA and TRF processes. The data for these processes was provided by TAHA, KMF Machinenfabriken GmbH and was sourced from publicly available data from Befesa Salzschlacke GmbH. TAHA and KMF have provided their most recent operational figures for their aluminium dross processes stemming from 2020, the publicly sourced information from Befesa stems from 2019 and was not verified externally.  EY has used this provided data to perform the carbon footprint benchmark.