Commercial operations of Hydro’s advanced scrap sorting technology have started at PADNOS’s sorting hub in Grandville, Michigan. Only ten months ago, Norwegian aluminum and renewable energy company Hydro partnered with scrap management enterprise PADNOS to create Alusort LLC. Alusort is owned fifty-fifty by Hydro and PADNOS, and is located to supply Hydro’s Cassopolis and Henderson recycling plants with raw material for large-scale production of low-carbon Hydro CIRCAL, which is Hydro’s line of recycled aluminum with minimum 75% post-consumer scrap content.

The proprietary HySort technology, pioneered in Europe and now used by Alusort, allows more mixed and challenging types of post-consumer aluminum scrap to be sorted into fractions, before being returned to the recycling plants as feedstocks. This enables the aluminum recycling plants to achieve streamlined production of high quality, low-carbon aluminum.

Access to post-consumer scrap is becoming increasingly important for aluminum recycling companies such as Hydro in the US. The establishment of Alusort and the US$4-million investment in cutting edge sorting technology answers the call for putting valuable materials from cars, buildings, electronic equipment or other consumer goods to good use in a growing domestic market rather than sending it to landfills or exporting it overseas.

PADNOS personnel are responsible for running daily operations at Alusort, with Hydro personnel overseeing activities and providing technical support. With its annual sorting capacity of 20,000 tonnes of aluminum scrap per year, the HySort machine is important for the production of high-quality, recycled alloys aimed at the US automotive, building & construction, and other key markets.

Aluminum is recyclable without loss of the qualities that make it an important enabler for the green transition and recycling requires only five percent of the energy used to produce primary aluminum in a smelter. This is why it is vital to recycle more post-consumer scrap to accelerate emission cuts.

Stepping up growth in recycling capacity is one of the key factors in Hydro’s overall strategy towards 2030 to meet the increasing demand for low-carbon, recycled products. Hydro is continuously exploring new possibilities, both to source post-consumer scrap and develop advanced sorting technologies, to allow an increased amount of used aluminum to be sorted, repurposed and given a new life.

Hydro’s proprietary HySort technology, utilizing laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS), allows Hydro to dig deeper into the scrap pile to recycle aluminum that would otherwise end up in landfills. The technology was pioneered at Hydro’s recycling hub in Dormagen, Germany, and launches in the US market in 2024 by joint venture Alusort LLC. in Grandville, Michigan.