Aurubis commissions largest environmental protection installation in Hamburg since the 1980s

Prof. Dr. Fritz Vahrenholt, Aurubis AG Supervisory Board Chairman and former Environmental Senator of Hamburg, added,

When I was the member of Senate responsible for initiating the environmental remediation of what was then Norddeutsche Affinerie in 1985, nobody could have dreamed that it would ever be possible to operate a fully encapsulated copper ore smelter cost-efficiently. I’m proud of the Aurubis engineers for bringing this dream to life. This solves the problem of fine dust particles in copper production.

Unique scale and performance

For RDE, technologies were combined and partially automated in completely new ways. The roof openings are controlled in an energy-efficient manner in alignment with current needs – meaning that they are closed automatically, and only when emissions are expected in the production hall. The volume of suctioned air is equivalent to the volume that would be required to fill three hot-air balloons in one minute.

The sheer scale of this environmental protection measure, and of the facilities installed in this context, is a first in our industry,

Dr. Heiko Arnold continued. Furthermore, intermediate products from primary copper production will also be processed nearly emission-free in a new, closed building extension starting in 2022. This hall will be connected to the exhaust system as well.

Commitment to sustainability

Aurubis is committed to the goal of becoming carbon-neutral by 2050 at the latest and has set ambitious, science-based targets to reduce CO2 emissions through the Science Based Targets initiative. These targets are being consistently implemented through a number of decarbonization projects – such as the use of industrial heat, the power-to-steam procedure, and the sourcing and use of solar and wind energy for sustainable electricity generation.