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r Giant kilns at city plant fired by natural gas rotate to dry alumina in final processing step (Photos by John Best) is ari open shut story By MIKENORMAN uiiMii....... MI ?M**oic operations''in I and neaFTCorpus^Christ! .are l..i.k....e.......t..h. e ''.pJii&i glass ofwater that^is either half emp ty or half full, depending on your point Of View, On the one hand,! the company's San Patricio Reduction Plant on the north side of^orpus Christi Baylhas'been , shut down ''slnce^l975/'^The, :plant.. 4$$. opened in 1952 to ^produce aluminum , ingots; when v it closed'becausevof sharply rising natural gas prices/950 peoplelost theiis,jobs. But on the brighter,-side'of:things; * just next door to thatplant js the Rey- r.oids Sherwin Aluraiha Plant, still go- . ing strong with 9?0:empl6yees. - - And Reynolds' Worldwide'shipping activities have been based in Corpus Christ! for 25 ySspfs. with another 40 people working htipffices in the Petro leum Tower. It ls"the pnly shipping firm based here, and two of the com-, pany's six ships have Corpus. Christ! . as their homeiport. n a % \ Company officials say they're still sure the San Patricio plant will rp^ open some day -- just as soon as de- mand for aluminum is strong enough - and the market price of the light met al is high enough to justify the oper ation. 1 "There is no doubt in our minds that,.- we will reopen our-plant,''-, says pur-. rent San- Patricio^Plant^Manager Gene Dressen.''"It'sijust'a:majter of;'vi time;'.'y.-'K J ust)when,thattimewill<)^,meithervtf`.' Oressen nor other^lteyno^d^afficialsw'S are ready to sayiaAndvtheyJr&carefuk# lot to build 11 ;oon. ------- The problem >0 million - qubfcifeet1;ofcnatutaF'gas/jj? ;very day. wh'en%lji|ip full^berationwf That's more. thah;four times^asvmuch; f ;as as tbe,fentire*^,u(CbmdaChristl# isesinanaverageday. g- The San Patricio-plant 'can;t*com- j >ete with plants in other parts of thej'V :ountry,, at the high cost of Texasnat- iral gas today. >:Aj3S{/r$f Reynolds has demonstrated-its conf idence in the San Patricio plant by? astalling more than $30 million,wortb; .' Chuck Dunlevy prepares to cake alumina from kiln f pollution control equipment, since-* i- 'i he shutdown. That equiprpent now '*'. -ft?*- its idlewith the rest of therplajit;: '-..v:4:.iPalled the "key plant" in the: Rey- Alumina is further processed in re- But the Sherwiq Alumina Plant ne^. ; nolds aluminum-producing; oper- duction plants to form aluminum, ioor . is'different;, Plant employees: ations, the Sherwin plant transforms The bauxite -- about 4.6 million tons elebrated.the.pl4iqt's 25tfianniyersa-j ' bauxite -- redfdirt'scooped, from-.the., of it-each year -- is scooped from y. hq^e. last suamgCv Maux.P^them Lground in Jamaica and Haiti t-a into . Reynolds-owned mines and brought ` irked. thetCtiyS^Ko5Sun^.Taf.TMinum ,.0^<1A- ?r alumlnara/fine ^-harq^in Reynolds-owned ships. The ^white powder.'31 8r -.... ~'*--- IpgSfllBSTlb .^3-'ifdli^ttdvlofiiDmaun{v'S-'newest a.n! -d ' biegege.stLs, hinp, the 52,000-ton David P. Reynolds, ar- * rives here every eight days from Ja maica with a load of bauxite. The ships are equipped with sys tems to unload themselves at the dock next to the Sherwin plant. The bauxiffe travels to storage areas down a com pletely-enclosed conveyor system surrounded by dust-collection de vices, all aimed at fighting air pollu tion. Just the same, the ground, the con crete driveways, the buildings and everything else on this side of the plant is covered with rusty red dust from the bauxite. The idea behind the Sherwin plant's production process is simple. "Bauxite is a mixture of insolubles and alumina," says Mort Handclman, a 25-year employee now working as a technical assistant. "We dissolve the alumina and reject the insolubles."' ' In practice, it's not that simple. First, the red bauxite dirt is ground into a fine powder and mixed with a caustic soda solution to form a slurry. That slurry is sent to digesters wher^, under high pressure and temper ature, most of the alumina dissolves in the solution. The slurry is then pumped to set tling tanks where the insoluble mud settles out of the alumina-saturated solution. ,d' The mud is pumped away, washed and deposited on farming areas norm of the plant. The alumina-saturated solutiori, called a "liquor" at the plant', 1$'fil tered to remove the last of the un wanted mud. Then it is sent to one of over 200 large "precipitator'' tankB, where the alumina is removed from the solution. u T""-: The rust-colored liquor is still hot when it enters the precipitators. /Iris constantly agitated. and' cooled; and previously-produced .alumina u1s added to it. This causes the alumina which had dissolved to fall out of solu tion. "Y,, From the precipitators, the \y^t, powdered alumina is sent to long, gas-fired kilns to be dried. The nine huge kilns rotate as they dry the alu mina at temperatures around 2:700 degrees Fahrenheit. * At the end of the kilns, the alumina falls out in a fine snow. It covers this side of the plant, a white contrast to the red of the bauxite areas. The alumina is stored In silos before being sent by ship, barge or train to reduction plants, Preprocessing into aluminum. r ... | i