Spectro Alloys of Rosemount is investing $10 million to make its Rosemount recycling plant, the Upper Midwest's largest processor of industrial aluminum, safer and more energy efficient.
In May, Spectro Alloys settled an air-pollution issue with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), paying a $110,000 civil penalty and installing about $250,000 worth of pollution-control equipment on one of its furnaces.
Spectro Alloys President Luke Palen, whose family has owned the company since 1989, said the company already had planned improvements that far exceeded that fix.
"These investments demonstrate our commitment to continuous innovation for the environment and our community," Palen said last week. "We proposed an equipment upgrade that … was well beyond what was required [by EPA]."
In addition to the upgrade of one of its three furnaces, Spectro just completed a new $3 million "baghouse" and related equipment.
Baghouses are attached to furnaces to capture emissions. Spectro's new baghouse goes well beyond government and industry standards in terms of worker safety, pollution abatement and energy efficiency, Palen said.
The new baghouse, where red-hot, 28-pound aluminum ingots arrive from the furnace, will be cooled by ambient air instead of huge fans using a lot of energy.
"The big improvement is the environment for the workers working with finished product," Palen said. "When I started working in the plant as a teenager, you could only put the cast aluminum on pallets by hand, with a shovel. We've gone to robotic palletizing. It's very hot metal that comes off the end of the casting line, from the furnace. This is much safer."