Issue |
Matériaux & Techniques
Volume 108, Number 5-6, 2020
Materials and Society: transitions in society, materials and energy
|
|
---|---|---|
Article Number | 506 | |
Number of page(s) | 22 | |
Section | Environnement - recyclage / Environment - recycling | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/mattech/2021008 | |
Published online | 26 April 2021 |
Regular Article
The beginning and the end of the aluminium value chain
Norwegian University of Science and Technology – NTNU,
Trondheim, Norway
* e-mail: leiv.kolbeinsen@ntnu.no
Received:
5
October
2020
Accepted:
9
February
2021
Metallic aluminium does not naturally occur in nature, and it was largely unknown, virtually a mystery, until 200 years ago. The modern aluminium production using a hydrometallurgical refining process for making alumina followed by electrolysis of this mineral was first developed in 1886 and, in principle, the same technology is still used to this day. About 90% of alumina refineries in the world use the Bayer process for refining Bauxite ore. It is very efficient, but it can only be used on high quality bauxite with low content of admixtures, especially silicon. The Bayer process also generates a Bauxite Residue (BR), maybe better known as Red Mud (RM) which is a thick red-brown, high-basicity paste consisting of silicon, iron, aluminium, titanium and others. The International Institute of Aluminium estimates that since 1886 almost a billion tonnes of aluminium were produced around the world with three fourths of this amount still being in use today, of which about 35% is located in buildings and structures, 30% in electric cables and equipment and 30% in transport. Aluminium scrap is collected all over the world. In the home, it mostly consists of aluminium beverage cans. It is claimed that 1 ton of recycled empty beverage cans save 8 tons of bauxite, 4 kg of various fluorides and 14 kWh of electricity1. Additionally, recycling aluminium significantly reduces the negative environmental impact of ever-expanding RM landfills. As the idea of environmental responsibility is gaining more and more traction, separate household scrap recycling is becoming more and more popular around the world. How challenges related to such activity can be met will be the main topic of this paper alongside discussing new developments for alumina production without RM generation.
Key words: materials cycle / gross energy requirement / embodied energy / global aluminium flow / aluminium use / transport sector / waste / circular materials economy / alumina production
© SCF, 2021
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Current usage metrics show cumulative count of Article Views (full-text article views including HTML views, PDF and ePub downloads, according to the available data) and Abstracts Views on Vision4Press platform.
Data correspond to usage on the plateform after 2015. The current usage metrics is available 48-96 hours after online publication and is updated daily on week days.
Initial download of the metrics may take a while.