Alcoa is the world’s leading producer of primary- and fabricated aluminum and the world’s largest user of bauxite. In addition to the creation of modern day aluminum industry, over the past 125 years, Alcoa innovation have stood behind the all important milestone in aerospace, automotive, packaging, building and construction, commercial transportation, consumer electronics and industrial and commercial markets. Also developed expertise in special fields of industry such as the production of light metals and titanium, nickel-based superalloys. What is more, generates rolled products, extruded hard metal alloys and forged products, such as Alcoa® wheels, fastening systems, precision- and aircraft castings and distributed systems architecture. Alcoa bought a majority stake in Székesfehérvár Alloy Plant in 1993, now is a full owner since 1996. 

The team of Prof. Dr. Thomas Kekesi has done investigations and research several times in the plant of Székesfehérvár.

Our team in the Alcoa-Köfém Ltd.

The very first research topic was in connection with the cleanness of the melt. The research was designed to optimize the degassing equipment in order to achieve maximum efficiency. The modell of degasing have been investigated in industrial circumstances in a framework of a new R&D project. The following research work was much more comprehensive.
Our three-man team investigated the production for more than a month of operation, sometimes in 24-hour shifts. The aim was to set up a full material balance for the melting process. The extraordinary research requested significant contribution from the operating specialists, as well. We had to know precisely the wight of different types of waste being melted, and the weight of alloyers and smelting slag formers. We attempted to determine the amount of residual melt after tapping with a laser based technique.We specified the metal content of Al-alloy drosses in order
to more precisely estimate the so-called ‘sunburn’ loss at the end of the whole material balance.
The evaluation of the collected data has been continued in our institute. The results are well matched to the operating practices and useful for the correct operation of the furnaces. In the Next project we collected slags arising form the melting of different types of alloys, which were treated in our laboratories. We have developed a method to determine the metal content of slags resulting from aluminum smelting. We determined the described the mechanism of slag formation and revealed correspondances between the operation, the slag formation and the metal loss. We made proposals for the Alcoa-Köfém Ltd. based on our results of slag treatment expreiments to become more economical.

„A project for developing and optimizing a method to process and purify tin arising from soldering waste.”
ID: REG_EM_KFI_09 (2009)
Period: 2010.05.01-2011.12.31.

Research riport of “ONRITRAN” (in Hungarian)

The aim was to give opportunity for the the graduating students, PhD students and entrant engineers of the Materials Science and Engineering faculty of the University of Miskolc to gain international experiences relevant to their stuides and future work.

A more detailed description is available here. (in Hungarian)

A detailed description is available here. (in Hungarian)

• A study for helping DUNAFERR Ltd. in realizing an import strategy for iron ores.
• Metallurgical properties of iron sinters and the operation of the blast furnace in the function of basicity.
• Investigation of basic iron sinters’ metallurgical properties produced by DUNAFERR STEELWORKS Ltd.
• The effect of the limestone content of the blast furnace mixture to the energy consumption and the possible price-, enegy-, and coke-savings arising from its substitution.
• Investigation of the reactivity and strength of the blast furnace coke.
• Developing methods for determining the changes in the reactivity and strength of the blast furnace coke.
• Constructing a matehmatical model to determine the metallurgical value of balst furnace coke.
• Specifying the optimal parameters of the furnace coke production in the Coking plant of DUNAFERR STEELWORKS Ltd. for the utilization in the local blast furnace plant.
• Investigations for the determination of the optimal amount of natural gas usage in the blast furnace plant of DUNAFERR STEELWORKS Ltd.
• Limits and results of natural gas injection and the possibilities of coal powder injection in the blast furnace plant of ISD DUNAFERR Ltd. 
• Review of the charger system of the blast furnace plant in ISD DUNAFERR Ltd.
• Theoretical and practical determination of the optimal jet size of no. 1. blast furnace in the ISD DUNAFERR Ltd.
• Elaboration and determination of calculating the bottom wearing in blast furnaces. 
• Relationships between the fluctuations in the charge materials’ chemical and physical properties and the quailty changes of pig iron in the blast furnace plant of DUNAFERR STEELWORKS Ltd.
• Practical presentation of the Correspondence of parameters affecting pig iron production.
• Furnace run optimalization – especially in regard to the natural gas consumption in the blast furnaces of DUNAFERR STEELWORKS Ltd.
• Investigation of blast furnaces working with pellets only.
• Evalutation of the metallurgical work of no. 2. blast furnace in DUNAFERR STEELWORKS Ltd.
• Optimalization of the correspondence between the Si-content of pig iron and the temperature of the melt in the pig iron production system of DUNAFERR STEELWORKS Ltd.
• Casemap of low Si-content (0,2-0,4%) pig iron production taking into account the technological properties of DUNAFERR STEELWORKS Ltd.
• Determining the heat transfer coeffitient of liquid pig iron as a function of temperature change.