Aluminium Smelter Robots: Anode Change to ABB

An aluminium smelter robot works in one of the harshest places in heavy industry: a potroom hundreds of metres long, full of heat, fluoride fumes and magnetic fields strong enough to upset ordinary electronics. This post looks at how smelters have been run since the Hall-Héroult process, how anode changing moved from hand tools to pot tending machines, and why the first anode-changing robot was tested in a Norwegian potroom in September 2026. It also covers a new Canadian venture for robotic anode assembly, where ABB robots already handle hot metal in other industries, and what still holds robots back in smelters.

A reduction line at Alba's aluminium smelter in Bahrain, with a service vehicle in the aisle between the pots. Photo: Albasmelter / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

How aluminium smelting was run by hand

Modern aluminium production dates from 1886, when Charles Martin Hall in the United States and Paul Héroult in France each worked out how to split alumina dissolved in molten cryolite with electric current. Hall's company, the Pittsburgh Reduction Company, later Alcoa, began production in 1888. The process has changed little in principle. A low voltage direct current, now 100 to 300 kiloamperes, runs through cells called pots, liquid aluminium collects at the bottom and the oxygen burns away the carbon anodes that hang in the bath. Because the pots must never freeze, smelters run 24 hours a day, every day of the year.

Aluminium ingots stacked at the Norwegian Aluminium Company in Høyanger, Norway, on a hand coloured slide from 1926. Photo: Anders Beer Wilse / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)

That made the potroom a place of constant manual work. Operators broke the hard crust on top of each pot with bars to add alumina, pulled out spent anodes and set new ones, and siphoned off the metal every one to three days. A photograph of a French potroom from the post-war decades shows long rows of numbered pots under a crane, with a few workers on foot between them. The work exposed people to radiant heat, dust and hydrogen fluoride gas from the bath, and anode changing in particular stayed one of the most demanding jobs in the plant for most of the 20th century.

A French aluminium potroom with long rows of numbered pots, photographed between 1948 and 1967. Photo: US Agency for International Development via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

The first big step toward automation was the pot tending machine, an overhead crane fitted with tools to break the crust, pull anodes, set new ones and feed alumina. An ECL paper dates the machine to 1962, and Fives, which now owns the ECL line, says it has installed more than 1,300 of them worldwide. Each pot has 16 to 40 anodes to change as they burn down. Even with the crane, a floor operator still works alongside the machine during an anode change. Many modern pots also have built-in crust breakers and point feeders that add alumina automatically.

Yellow service vehicles parked in the potroom of the Bratsk Aluminium Smelter, 2014. Photo: UC Rusal Photo Gallery / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

Aluminium smelter robots in 2026

The first robot to take over part of anode changing has now passed its site test. On 29 September 2026 AlumatIQ said the first module of its anode changing robot, automated handling of the pot covers, had been installed in the potroom at Alcoa Mosjøen in Norway and passed its Site Acceptance Test with Alcoa, in the heat, dust and magnetic fields of a working electrolysis hall. Operators no longer need to stand next to an open pot during that step. Alcoa's potroom manager Veselmøy Villmones said the cooperation started in 2016. AlumatIQ will show the system at Aluminium 2026 in Düsseldorf from 6 to 8 October.

A worker in heat protective clothing and a face shield in the Bratsk Aluminium Smelter, 2014. Photo: UC Rusal Photo Gallery / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

Robots are also moving into the anode plants that feed the potrooms. On 4 September 2026 AL Circle reported that the Norwegian automation company Storvik and the Canadian firm Charl-Pol have set up Alumotion, a joint venture that will first focus on robotised anode assembly for Canadian smelters. Storvik brings experience with robotics, automated handling, vision systems and condition monitoring for aluminium plants, and Charl-Pol brings local engineering, welding, manufacturing and maintenance. Storvik had earlier installed a robotic line in the rodding plant at Alcoa Mosjøen, where anodes are fixed to the steel yokes and rods that carry the current.

Molten metal is poured from a ladle at the Bratsk Aluminium Smelter, 2014. Photo: UC Rusal Photo Gallery / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

ABB has no announced smelter robot, and none of these projects names ABB as a supplier. ABB arms do handle hot metal in related industries. In 2003 Corus installed two ABB IRB 6400 FoundryPlus robots at its Teesside Beam Mill to spray identification codes onto hot steel sections with paint that works at up to 800 °C, and the company later reported more than 99.9 percent availability, as our steel mill post describes. ABB's Foundry Plus robots also work in aluminium die casting cells, covered in the gigacasting post, where they take hot castings out of the die and spray release agent.

One of two ABB IRB 6400 FoundryPlus robots that spray identification codes on hot beams at the Teesside Beam Mill. Photo: ABB

Where smelter automation goes next

The casthouse is the most likely place for general-purpose industrial robots in an aluminium plant. Jobs there, such as taking metal samples, skimming dross, marking ingots and changing filters, look like jobs ABB robots already do in foundries and steel mills. A heavy arm such as the IRB 6700 could, in principle, handle anode assemblies in a rodding shop, and Foundry Plus versions could work near the metal. ABB does not sell such a cell, so this is a possibility. Cells like these are usually laid out and tested first in RobotStudio, which matters in a plant where downtime costs metal.

An ABB robot seen between the open halves of a die casting die. ABB builds protected Foundry versions of its robots for hot, dirty cells. Photo: ABB

Households meet the result in drink cans, window frames, cars and cooking foil. Smelting is very energy hungry: the process commonly needs about 15 kWh of electricity per kilogram of aluminium. Alcoa's Villmones says the anode changing robot should make the process simpler, safer, more stable and more efficient. In the coming years, expect more of the anode change to be split into modules, cover handling first, then crust breaking and anode setting, as AlumatIQ describes.

An ABB IRB 6700 grinding a steel part in Teqram's EasyGrinder cell at Ancofer. Photo: ABB

The open problems are hard ones. Potrooms have magnetic fields from currents of hundreds of thousands of amperes, which can disturb motors, sensors and electronics, and every robot has to prove it survives heat, fluoride dust and corrosive fumes for years. Smelters are expensive to stop, so robots must be installed and maintained in short windows while the pots keep running. Plants in remote places also need local service, which is why Alumotion stresses keeping engineering and maintenance close to Canadian smelters. Operators will still be needed, now trained to supervise and repair robots in place of swinging crust bars.

Two workers next to a coil of aluminium wire rod at the Bratsk Aluminium Smelter, 2014. Photo: UC Rusal Photo Gallery / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

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