The 115-year history of the Hall-Heroult process for production of aluminium has been characterised by a sustained technology-driven improvement in costs and productivity. In the past decade the industry has effectively transferred best practice into older technology with improvements through computer control of the process, and redesign of cell limings using computer modelling. Incremental development is now at the point where diminishing returns will apply for further technical improvement effort however, until the gap between technical limits and current best practice is addressed through major process redesign.
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