While there are many manufacturing processes of HPA, the most common is the hydrolysis of aluminium alkoxide. This process involves synthesising aluminium metal and alcohol to produce high purity aluminium alkoxide. HPA is then procured by calcination. Other existing processes include the production of HPA from aluminium metal feedstock or hydrochloric acid leach of kaolin clay. However, these processes are inefficient as they’re energy and labour intensive, produce high emissions, and create a significant amount of waste.

At Alpha HPA, our HPA production process using our proprietary Smart SX Technology™ is extremely sustainable, low in energy consumption and results in near zero waste. We estimate a 70 percent reduction in CO2 emissions via our Smart SX process compared to the incumbent alkoxide process.

Our Smart SX Technology process uses established solvent extraction, re-purposed to the highly selective extraction of Al3+ cations from an aluminium-loaded liquor. It transforms aluminium loaded organic (solvent) through two crystallisation steps into an intermediary product that can be calcined to high-purity alumina (HPA) with benign off-gases. The loaded organic stream can be directed to any acid stream to generate 5N+ purity aluminium precursors (salts), or 4N+ boehmite or alumina. The process recycles close to 100% of its process reagents and process streams.

The Smart SX process is simple, ingenious, and flexible, purifying a common industrial feedstock into a range of ultra-pure aluminium products at high efficiency and low cost. Our technology uses no novel units of operation, but instead employs unique, proprietary process chemistry to deliver the first aluminium SX facility in the world.

Want to find out more? Reach out to our Sales & Marketing Manager Derek Bogaert to set up a discovery call with Alpha HPA to discover more: hello@alphahpa.com.au