Smart Clean Aluminium Material Processing - Digital Sorting, Intelligent Pre-treatment, and Advanced Melt Refining

Aluminium recycling is a cornerstone of sustainable metallurgy, yet current processes remain constrained by hazardous fluxing agents, chemical cleaning, and high emissions of particulates, VOCs, dioxins, and salt slag waste. The CLEANMAT project develops an end-to-end optimisation pathway to address these challenges, integrating digitalisation, advanced materials science, and sustainable process engineering. A Digital Thread interlinks scrap sorting, pre-treatment, melt refining, and downstream alloy qualification, enabling AI-driven optimisation and traceability across the full value chain. Multi-sensor characterisation technologies will identify residual contaminants that evade conventional sorting, ensuring feedstock purity. Closed-loop heat pre-treatment and cleaning will safely eliminate organic coatings and residues. At the refining stage, two complementary approaches will be advanced: near-zero flux processing for induction furnaces, and ultra-low flux retrofits for rotary, reverberatory, and crucible furnaces, employing MHD flow, vacuum distillation, LiME, and HSMC conditioning. These processes will reduce flux use by up to 97%, while maintaining alloy quality and yield. Rigorous LCA, techno-economic, and occupational safety assessments will benchmark environmental and economic benefits. Industrial validation with automotive and recycling partners will demonstrate scalability and compliance with EN standards. CLEANMAT will deliver a replicable pathway to high-performance alloys from challenging scrap streams, establishing Europe’s global leadership in safe, low-emission, and circular aluminium recycling