ARENA funds major industrial heat electrification project

The Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) has announced it will provide funding to support Australia’s largest demonstration of industrial heat electrification at Rio Tinto’s Yarwun alumina refinery near Gladstone, Queensland.

The project aims to help validate the role of thermal energy storage in reducing fossil fuel use in energy-intensive industries and pave the way for similar projects in other sectors.

Industrial process heat is extremely challenging to decarbonise. Heavy industries such as alumina refining rely on large volumes of continuous, high-temperature steam that has traditionally been produced using fossil fuels. Thermal energy storage has emerged as a promising option where low-cost electricity is stored as heat and used to produce a continuous output of steam for refinery operations, reducing reliance on fossil fuel usage.

ARENA’s funding for the project will be provided in stages, with an initial $3.6 million to complete front-end engineering and design work. Following successful completion of that study, ARENA will provide up to $38 million for deployment. ARENA has also approved up to $33.3 million in conditional contingency support, which would only be made available in defined circumstances to manage specific project risks, including cost overruns and electricity costs.

ARENA CEO Darren Miller said technologies such as thermal energy storage need to be tested in real large-scale operating environments before they can be adopted more broadly across Australian industry.

“Industrial heat remains one of the toughest decarbonisation challenges facing heavy industries,” he said. “This project will test whether thermal energy storage can provide a practical pathway to lower emissions from industrial heat in a real-world operating environment, where reliability, performance and integration are critical.

“Large industrial facilities such as Yarwun provide the scale, infrastructure and operating conditions needed to properly evaluate emerging technologies. Demonstrations like this will help build the evidence industry needs to make future investment decisions so the value of this project extends well beyond a single refinery.”

The project will deploy a 30 MWt (discharge) / 78 MWe (charge) / 360 MWh Rondo Energy thermal energy storage unit at Yarwun, using low-cost electricity to charge a heat battery that can store energy and release it when needed to generate steam. It is expected to cut onsite emissions by around 67,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide each year.

The project is funded under ARENA’s Industrial Transformation Stream (ITS), which supports the development and demonstration of technologies that can reduce emissions from Australia’s industrial sector. Round 3 of ITS is currently open for applications. For further information and to apply, visit the funding page.

Image: Yarwun alumina refinery. Credit: Rio Tinto