Emirates Global Aluminium, the largest industrial company in the United Arab Emirates outside oil and gas, today announced a technology upgrade pilot at the company’s Al Taweelah smelter, which will further improve productivity and efficiency.
The pilot upgrades to 13 DX technology reduction cells will be used to prove the performance of the new technology, called E40, before industrialisation across all 808 DX technology reduction cells at potlines 1 and 2 at Al Taweelah.
If applied to all 808 reduction cells, EGA’s E40 technology has the potential to increase hot metal production from the two potlines by 67 thousand tonnes per year, while reducing net specific energy consumption and associated carbon dioxide emissions from power generation by approximately six per cent per tonne of metal produced.
EGA has accelerated the E40 pilot programme to install the technology upgrades during the ongoing restoration of Al Taweelah, which was significantly damaged when Iranian strikes on Khalifa Economic Zone Abu Dhabi led to an emergency shutdown.
Abdulnasser Bin Kalban, Chief Executive Officer of Emirates Global Aluminium, said: “Continuous improvement has long been fundamental to how we operate at EGA. We do not only use EGA technology for greenfield projects, but also to progressively produce more aluminium from our existing assets with greater efficiency and lower environmental impact. Accelerating the E40 pilot programme at Al Taweelah is one way we are emerging from the challenges of 2026 stronger than ever before.”
EGA has developed its own aluminium smelting technology in the UAE for more than 30 years and has used EGA technology in every smelter expansion since the 1990s. EGA also has a long history of retrofitting older production lines with in-house developed technology upgrades.
EGA completed a three-year, $300 million project in 2017 to replace reduction cells in older production lines at its Jebel Ali smelter with the company’s own UAE-developed technology, boosting production capacity and reducing costs and environmental emissions.
Elsewhere at Al Taweelah, EGA is piloting its latest, 10th-generation EX smelting technology, which is amongst the most efficient aluminium smelting technologies in the world. The pilot is a key step towards preparing EX for large-scale industrialisation in greenfield projects, including in Oklahoma where EGA plans to build the first new primary aluminium smelter in the United States since 1980.
