Rio Tinto eyes a giant hot-brick battery to cut fossil fuel use — SkimNews
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- Rio Tinto and California's Rondo Energy launched engineering and design work on a thermal storage system at the Yarwun alumina refinery near Gladstone, Queensland, which Rondo calls Australia's largest planned heat battery and a first for the alumina sector globally.
- The proposed battery would store 360 MWh of heat and deliver up to 30 MW thermally, charging at 78 MW of electrical input — enough to meet roughly 5% of Yarwun's steam demand and avoid an estimated 67,000 metric tons of direct CO2 emissions per year.
- Rondo's technology uses electricity to heat refractory bricks that retain thermal energy and feed steam into the refinery's existing steam network, charging during cheap midday solar hours and discharging around the clock when solar output drops.
- ARENA is contributing an initial A$3.6 million for the feasibility study, with up to A$38 million pledged for deployment and an additional A$33.3 million in contingency support — funding Rio Tinto will match in the study phase.
- Rio Tinto Pacific Operations managing director Armando Torres called the high-pressure steam challenge in alumina refining 'complex,' framing the study as a test of whether thermal storage can be a 'technically and economically viable' fossil-fuel alternative.
- Rondo's Australian head, Dr. Kira Rundel, positioned the project as proof that Australia's abundant solar can be a 'competitive advantage' for industrial users needing round-the-clock heat.
- The feasibility study is expected to run about 12 months, leaving the project years away from displacing any of the refinery's current coal- and gas-fired steam generation.
Why it matters: Alumina refining accounts for roughly 175 million tonnes of CO2-equivalent emissions globally each year, and Rio Tinto — one of the world's largest aluminum players — is testing whether stored heat, not lithium or hydrogen, can replace fossil steam at industrial scale. If the 12-month study delivers, ARENA has already lined up A$38 million to back deployment, making this a real-money test of brick-based storage versus more hyped battery chemistries for heavy industry.
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