UC RUSAL announced that RUSAL’s Engineering and Technology Center jointly with Siberian Federal University created a technology to produce aluminum alloys containing rare earth metals and transition materials, as well as developed efficient equipment for its implementation. The project will enable the Company to produce alloys for heavy duty electric cables capable to transmit 1.5 times more electricity than modern power transmission lines.
One year ago RUSAL and SFU’s joint innovative project won Russian Ministry of Education and Science’s bid. The received funding amounting to RUR 110 million was used to acquire equipment and expendables needed to create an experimental wire rod production area at SFU. This production area enables to carry out several operations such as casting, rolling and presswork. RUSAL’s engineers and SFU scientists succeeded in creation of a unique equipment.
Mr Viktor Mann Technical Director of RUSAL said that “We are very pleased with the results of our joint project. The launch of new equipment will be a serious breakthrough in the aluminum smelter production facilities’ development. This unique equipment is able to produce special wire rod for cables with very high mechanical characteristics. We plan to install such equipment to produce these high tech and competitive products at the Irkutsk aluminum smelter first with the Bratsk and other RUSAL’s smelters following.”
The project’s participants forecast a high demand for the products manufactured on this equipment. Several Russian companies have already expressed their interest. In particular, RUSAL has started cooperation with the Moscow and Tomsk cable plants. The first samples have already been sent to Moscow for testing.
Mr Nickolay Dovzhenko director of Oil and Gas Institute at SFU who heads the project from the University side said that “Even at the development stage we received about thirty patents. To my mind, it is a new word in production of long components, such as electric cables, for example. It is worth noting that the introduced equipment is a large production complex compacted to one single unit. That is why it will be several times less expensive than the Western analogues. It will also allow reducing significantly energy and metal consumption. At the same time efficiency of production of several types of alloys using this equipment will be much higher as compared when competitors’ equipment is used. Also the introduced equipment requires fewer personnel to operate.”
