China Shenhua Group, the country's largest coal producer, on Sunday kicked off construction on a project capable of producing alumina from coal ash, a waste byproduct of thermal power generation.

Ling Wen, deputy manager of Shenhua Group, said the company plans to invest 135.8 billion yuan (21.4 billion U.S. dollars) in the project, located in the Jungar Coal Mining Area in Ordos, a prefecture-level city in north China's Inner Mongolia autonomous region.

The project includes a 6,600-megawatt power plant, an alumina plant and a gallium plant. All of the plants will use materials recycled from coal burning.

The Jungar Coal Mine was chosen in October by the ministries of land resources and finance to become the country's first coal mine to use recycled mineral resources.

Shenhua estimates that Ordos, which is home to one-sixth of the country's coal reserves, has the resources to produce 3 billion metric tons of alumina, a raw material used to make aluminum.