Bauxite refinery community noise control and prediction

Abstract

Alumar in the city of Sao Luis in Brazil is one of the largest bauxite processing plants in the world including refinery and reduction plants. The Alumar refinery will expand from approximately 1.4 million mtpy to approximately 3.5 million mtpy and the expansion is expected to be completed in the first half of 2008. Since the year 2000 the authors worked in collaborative way with the in-plant and community noise control and prediction program for the expansion project. The program included noise measurement in the existing plant, development of the Bauxite Refinery Noise Control Manual, several noise control guidelines, and noise modeling to predict community noise impact. The plant is surrounded by different land uses as residential, industrial, rural, and natural permanent protection. Using computer modeling it was studied how the refinery expansion could impact the community areas and what will be the critical equipment requiring special noise limits. The validation process predicted measured results in the range of +2.2 dB(A). The paper presents the noise program results obtained by the year 2006.