Red mud is a waste from alumina industry and its disposal and utilisation has always been a matter of concern for environmentalists as well as the alumina industry. Although the alumina technology is more than 100 years old, no solution could be evolved by the industry to avoid storage of the red mud slurry. As the slurry is alkaline in nature and its generation is nearly one and a half times of alumina, world over several billion tonnes of red mud is lying in various red mud ponds except in some countries where it is being discharged into sea.
In any alumina refinery, a major portion of land is used for handling this waste. Although red mud is rich in iron and titanium, no use could be made till now mainly due to the presence of caustic soda. looking into the serious nature of hazard that red mud ponds may have, the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) formed a special project a few months back called National Mission for Red Mud to sponsor and promote research in red mud utilisation.
The Vedanta Aluminium limited’s (VAl) refinery at lanjigarh has commissioned a project of producing red mud powder in a fully mechanised and automatic plant.
Giving details of the project, VAl president and COO Dr Mukesh Kumar informed that this is the first of its kind project in the world which has been set up at a capital expenditure of around Rs50 crore.
The system has been developed in-house after a continuous research of more than three years.
This would have numerous advantages like savings in caustic consumption by 10-15 kg per tonne of alumina, minimising land requirement by 50-60% and elimination of wet red mud storage thereby eliminating all environmental hazards. The powdery red mud can easily be utilised in cement industry and other industries.
Dr Mukesh Kumar further informed that Vedanta believes in expertise available in the country and.
Thus, signed MoUs with several institutions including CSIR laboratories in the country under the Industry –Institution Interface, promoted by the Eastern Regional Office of the MoEF as well as the SPCB Odisha to develop more such technologies so that refinery could be made a zero-discharge and zero-waste refinery, thereby eliminating all environmental hazards.