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Light Metals Project Distills Decades of Knowledge to Its Essential Elements |
By Lynne Robinson
Posted on: 3/21/2013 12:00:00 AM... Editor’s Note: The following is excerpted from a feature published in the March 2013 issue of JOM. TMS members can access the complete online article—including the editors’s perspectives of the historical milestones and innovations reflected in each of the Essential Readings volumes—by logging in to the Members Only home page and then visiting JOMGateway.net.
Between the covers of Essential Readings in Light Metals is testament to the power of great ideas and the lasting impact of keen insight.
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Alumina and Bauxite Editors (starting at top): Don Donaldson, Alumina Industry Consultant; Benny E. Raahauge, FLSmidth A/S
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Papers dating back to the 1962 AIME International Symposium on the Extractive Metallurgy of Aluminum present the foundation of current practice, while also illuminating directions for future progress. “This is not a textbook, but a collection of the best papers from talented people representing leading aluminum companies, research institutions or themselves,” said Geoff Bearne, Aluminum Reduction Technology volume editor. “It presents the results and conclusions of more than a generation of work dedicated to improving the industry.”
In addition to Aluminum Reduction Technology, the Essential Readings collection is comprised of volumes on Alumina and Bauxite, Cast Shop for
Aluminum Production, and ElectrodeTechnology for Aluminum Production—all spanning more than 40 years of scholarship presented in the TMS Light Metals conference proceedings.
Each volume was developed under the leadership of two or three editors coordinating teams of topic experts. The sheer magnitude of material that these individuals took on was staggering—
at least 1,000 papers per volume, with nearly 5,000 papers overall considered for the project. In total, 33 volunteers gave of their time and expertise to the effort, completing their work in less than a year.
Despite the rather daunting metrics associated with the process, Alan Tomsett, Electrode Technology volume editor, said that he found it an enriching experience. “It has been a pleasure rediscovering the older papers published in the Light Metals volumes through this project,” he said. “It is a credit to the organizers and authors that such a large proportion of the technical knowledge of our industry was originally published and presented at the TMS Annual Meeting.”
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Aluminum Reduction Technology Editors (starting at top): Geoff Bearne, Rio Tinto Technology & Innovation; Marc Dupuis, GeniSim; Gary Tarcy, Alcoa
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An easier approach to selecting the Essential Readings articles would have been to limit the volumes to the Light Metals Division Best Paper Award winners recognized through the years. The editorial teams, however, saw the undertaking as an opportunity to provide the industry with a comprehensive historical retrospective of industrial innovation. “The project reminded me that we should spend more time looking back as part of the improvement process,” said Bearne. “Many of the problems that we face—and the ideas that we have—have existed before. Hopefully, these volumes will make it easier to learn from our predecessors.”
To accomplish this goal, the editorial teams established rigorous selection criteria that were applied to all papers, across all volumes. Priority was given to papers that described technological breakthroughs, had a significant impact on the industry or were highly rated by peers and other sources. Of particular interest were review papers that amassed contemporary thinking on key topics, but were still timeless in their relevance and application.
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Cast Shop Editors (starting at top): John Grandfield, Grandfield Technology; Dmitry Eskin, Brunel University
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Another unique challenge faced by the teams was simply gaining access to all the Light Metals proceedings from 1971 through 2011, since so much of the material pre-dated computerized publishing technologies and was not available electronically. It was also determined that papers from the 1962 AIME symposium should be considered, as it was viewed as the precursor to the TMS Light Metals symposia initiated nearly a decade later. A single copy of that event’s 1963 proceedings, Extractive Metallurgy of Aluminum, was eventually unearthed in a corporate library. “Some of us working on the project weren’t even aware of that volume’s existence until one of the teams discovered it and suggested that it be part of the selection process,” said Matt Baker, TMS Publications Manager and the staff coordinator for the project. “We were fortunate to be able to include it because of its historical significance.”
After months of scanning, exchanging, and reviewing many thousands of pages, the teams succeeded in distilling the years of Light Metals wisdom to a list of about 140 to 160 candidate papers for each volume. Manufacturing restrictions—the books could not be physically bound beyond 1,200 pages—compelled even further fine tuning to a final selection. The “short list” articles that were ultimately not published in Essential Readings are indexed in “Recommended Readings” sections throughout each volume, reflecting their value as part of the industry’s knowledge base. At the conclusion of the selection process, only about 10 to 15 percent of all Light Metals articles published over the decades made it into Essential Readings.
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Electrode Technology Editors (starting at top): Alan Tomsett, Pacific Aluminium; John Johnson, RUSAL Engineering & Technical Centre
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While many of the fundamental concepts and technologies represented in the volumes have held firm over the years, the papers—considered as a whole—provide valuable perspective on how the industry has grappled with such issues as energy efficiency, environmental impact, resource availability, and economic pressures over time. As noted in the preface to the Cast Shop volume, the project has also helped shed light on “innovative concepts that perhaps the industry did not capitalize on at the time, [but] may now be viable due to the development of modern enabling technologies.” Later papers reflecting the impact of some of those “enabling technologies”—particularly the power afforded by computerization and computational tools—offer stepping stones to future innovation.
Highlighting these connections between the learning of the past to future discoveries is probably the most significant contribution of the Light Metals project. “Very little really new learning has happened over the recent years,” commented Benny E. Raahauge, Alumina and Bauxite volume editor. “It is as though some of the former published technical papers had been forgotten— There has been a tendency to repeat some of the old work using new analytical tools. This is not necessarily bad, but the conclusions may be misleading if the results are misinterpreted, owing to non-representative test conditions, when compared to industrial-scale processing. Fortunately, publishing Essential Readings in Light Metals will reduce such events in the future.”
Dmitry Eskin, Cast Shop volume editor, agreed, saying, “The role of such a reference source is to not only remind us about the treasures of the past, but to also save time for the current researcher by not repeating what others have done, and instead moving forward.”
The Essential Readings in Light Metals collection is now available for purchase—either as a set or as individual volumes—at the Wiley website. TMS members should log on to the Members Only home page to access their 25 percent discount code that can be applied to Essential Readings, as well as other Wiley publications.
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