UK Center for Aluminum Technology Awarded Kentucky DOE Contract

The Kentucky Commerce Department, Office of Energy Policy, has awarded UK's Center for Aluminum Technology (CAT) a two-year Research and Development contract to study "Advanced Scalable Clean Aluminum Melting Systems".

This seed project will be devoted to developing natural gas fired immersion heaters for the aluminum melting furnaces to increase the thermal efficiency. With recycled aluminum meltables being the main source of material available for US's fabrication industry (as primary production is leaving the US to low energy cost countries) and the cost of natural gas hovering at around $14 per million BTU, this project has great importance in lowering the cost of aluminum melting and recycling in the US. If successful, the results of this project can provide the basis for much larger development and demonstration phases with DOE at later stages.