The 8th Electrodes Iceland Conference will be held in May 2020 in a new location, Austurland, the home of Alcoa Fjarðaál. Start planning your next visit to Iceland www.austurland.is.

The 7th conference was held in Reykjavik 25-27th April 2017 and turned out to be yet another successful event. A total of 93 delegates from 16 countries took part, with 46 from Iceland and 47 from abroad. A total of 20 presentations were given. The conference programme can be found here.

The keynote presentation was given by Prof. Halvor Kvande who discussed the carbon footprint of aluminium smelters and how it can be minimized. Analysing the CO₂-equivalent emission at all stages in the production process he concluded that if all aluminium smelters used renewable energy sources, the CO₂-eq emission could be reduced by 70%. Inert anodes have been discussed for decades and it has been assumed that implementation of such anodes would result in a major reduction in the carbon footprint. Halvor Kvande showed however that with the current energy mix, a switch to inert anodes would reduce the carbon footprint by 20%.

After the final session on day two, delegates visited the Century Aluminum Nordural smelter at Grundartangi. On day three, delegates visited the RioTinto Iceland smelter at Straumsvik. These visits were really interesting and allowed delegates to discuss technical matters on-site with professionals running the smelters.

Photos from the conference can be seen here.

The 8th conference is planned for May 2020. Copies of the proceedings are available from Innovation Center Iceland at $500 (contact Birgir Jóhannesson: birgirj@nmi.is). The papers will then be sent by email.