How is aluminium manufactured

The process where the aluminium is shaped to its required form. This process is used for making the vast majority of aluminium products from spectacle frames, telephone bodies, aeroplane fuselages or spaceship bodies.

The malleability of aluminium means it can be easily rolled into thin sheets. To that end, aluminium alloys are cast into rectangular beams up to 9 metres in length, these are then rolled into sheets from which aluminium foil and beverage cans are made, as well as parts of automobile bodies and a vast array of other products. There is another far less common method for making alumina.

It's called sintering. The idea is to make solid materials from powders at high temperature. Bauxites are sintered with soda and lime. The latter two elements bind the silica into insoluble silicates that can then be easily separated from alumina. The sintering process is more energy intensive than the Bayer process but it can be used to make alumina from bauxites with a high content of toxic silica admixtures.

Ivittuuit One of the few natural deposits of cryolite on Earth is in the town of Ivituuit in Greenland. It was discovered in Mining for Cryolite stopped there in when the process for making artificial cryolite was developed.

Alumina is the direct source of aluminium in the aluminium production process, but in order to create the right environment for electrolysis another component is necessary, and that component is cryolite. It's a rare natural fluoride mineral which due to its scarcity in natural form has been manufactured artificially. In modern metal production, cryolite is made by mixing hydrofluoric acid with aluminium hydroxide and soda.

Aluminium Production. So we've mined bauxite, made alumina from it and stockpiled cryolite, and now everything is ready for the last stage: electrolytic reduction to make aluminium. The reduction area is the heart of an aluminium smelter and it looks very different from the production shops in your typical steel works that make cast iron or steel. The reduction area consists of several rectangular buildings whose length sometimes exceeds 1 kilometre.

Inside there are hundreds of reduction cells or pots arranged in rows and hooked up to power sources via massive cables. The constant voltage at the electrodes of each reduction cell varies in the range of between 4 and 6 volts, while the amperage can reach , KA and more. It's the electric current that is the main production force in this process. There are only a handful of people in a typical reduction area as all the key processes are automated. Current for aluminium production To start a car engine, current of A is needed for 30 seconds.

That's times less than one reduction cell requires on an ongoing basis. In each reduction cell, aluminium is produced from alumina via the electrolytic reduction process. The entire cell is filled up with molten cryolite that creates a conductive environment at a temperature of oC. The bottom of the cell works as the cathode while the role of the cathode is played by special cryolite-carbon blocks 1.

These blocks look like massive hammers. Every thirty minutes an automatic alumina feeding system dumps a new portion of alumina into the cell. The electric current flowing through the cell breaks down the bond between aluminium and oxygen, causing aluminium to settle to the bottom of the cell and form a layer cm deep while the oxygen binds with the carbon in the anode blocks to form carbon dioxide.

Two to four times per day, aluminium gets extracted from the cell with special vacuum buckets. A hole is punched in the cryolite crust that forms on the surface of the reduction cell, then a pipe is lowered in through the hole. Through this pipe liquid aluminium is sucked into the bucket, from which all air is pumped out in advance. On average, about 1 tonne of metal is recovered from every reduction cell while a vacuum bucket can hold 4 tonnes of molten aluminium.

Once the bucket is full it is taken to the casthouse. For every tonne of aluminium produced, , cubic metres of gases are emitted. Using the forming process of extrusion, the aluminium is shaped in its required form and delivers almost unlimited possibilities in product design.

Aluminium can be recycled endlessly without loss of its properties, and this makes it a key contributor to a more resource-efficient European economy.

Production process From mine to market. Bauxite mining. Alumina and bauxite are the two main raw materials in the aluminium making process. Aluminium is obtained by the electrolysis of alumina which extracts pure aluminium metal from alumina.

About Aluminium. About Aluminium Aluminium is the most plentiful metal in the earth's crust. The production process: Aluminium production starts with the raw material bauxite, a clay-like soil.