The Aluminium Research Centre – REGAL congratulates all the leaders, and their collaborators, whose projects have been selected for funding under the NSERC Alliance Grants Program. Alliance Grants foster collaborations between university researchers and partner organizations in the private, public or not-for-profit sectors. They support research projects led by strong teams of complementary partners that will generate new knowledge and accelerate the translation of research results into benefits for Canada.

The collaboration with Alcoa and Laval University began in 2009 with Mario Fafard’s MACE3 Industrial Research Chair and an NSERC Cooperative Research and Development (CRD) grant led by Prof. Alamdari. Shortly after, Prof. Duchesne also obtained an NSERC CRD grant with Alcoa. The Chair and the two NSERC DRC grants were renewed in 2014-2015. All these years of collaboration have allowed the training of more than 50 graduate students, numerous undergraduate and post-doctoral fellows, and the acquisition of state-of-the-art equipment. The team has also received $180,000 in financial support from MITACS to support internships at Alcoa.

The Aluminium Research Centre – REGAL is proud of the collaboration between its members and presents below the recipient teams. Note that REGAL members are identified by an asterisk*.

Improvement of energy efficiency and environmental footprint of Al production process, Phase III: Carbon Anode process
Responsible: Houshang Alamdari*
Co-applicant: Carl Duchesne*, Louis Gosselin*
Collaborator: Seyed Mohammad Taghavi*, Thierry Ollevier
Company: Alcoa
Amount 1 513 680 $

Development of advanced models for reducing energy and material consumption in the primary production of aluminium industry
Responsible: Louis Gosselin*
Co-applicant: Houshang Alamdari*, Carl Duchesne*, Mario Fafard*, Seyed Mohammad Taghavi*
Company: Alcoa
Amount: 1 252 665 $

Development of advanced monitoring and control schemes for the primary aluminum industry
Responsible: Carl Duchesne*
Co-demandeurs : Éric Poulin, Houshang Alamdari*, Louis Gosselin*
Collaborator : Gudrun Saevarsdottir; Jayson Tessier; Julien Lauzon-Gauthier; Ryan Soncini
Company:  Alcoa
Amount: 711 924 $

With these new Alliance projects, the relationship between Laval University and Alcoa is heading towards more than 15 years of collaboration.