Aluminum

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SIT Innovation Suite 2011 Learn the methodology of innovative thinking and start using it! SITsite.com The metallic element aluminum is the third most plentiful element in the earth's crust, comprising 8% of the planet's soil and rocks (oxygen and silicon make up 47% and 28%, respectively). In nature, aluminum is found only in chemical compounds with other elements such as sulphur, silicon, and oxygen. Pure, metallic aluminum can be economically produced only from aluminum oxide ore. Metallic aluminum has many properties that make it useful in a wide range of applications. It is lightweight, strong, nonmagnetic, and nontoxic. It conducts heat and electricity and reflects heat and light. It is strong but easily workable, and it retains its strength under extreme cold without becoming brittle. The surface of aluminum quickly oxidizes to form an invisible barrier to corrosion. Furthermore, aluminum can easily and economically be recycled into new products.

Background
Aluminum compounds have proven useful for thousands of years. Around 5000 B.C. , Persian potters made their strongest vessels from clay that contained aluminum oxide. Ancient Egyptians and Babylonians used aluminum compounds in fabric dyes, cosmetics, and medicines. However, it was not until the early nineteenth century that aluminum was identified as an element and isolated as a pure metal. The difficulty of extracting aluminum from its natural compounds kept the metal rare for many years; half a century after its discovery, it was still as rare and valuable as silver. In 1886, two 22-year-old scientists independently developed a smelting process that made economical mass production of aluminum possible. Known as the Hall-Heroult process after its American and French inventors, the process is still the primary method of aluminum production today. The Bayer process for refining aluminum ore, developed

in 1888 by an Austrian chemist, also contributed significantly to the economical mass production of aluminum. In 1884, 125 lb (60 kg) of aluminum was produced in the United States, and it sold for about the same unit price as silver. In 1995, U.S. plants produced 7.8 billion lb (3.6 million metric tons) of aluminum, and the price of silver was seventy-five times as much as the price of aluminum.

Raw Materials
Aluminum compounds occur in all types of clay, but the ore that is most useful for producing pure aluminum is bauxite. Bauxite consists of 45-60% aluminum oxide, along with various impurities such as sand, iron, and other metals. Although some bauxite deposits are hard rock, most consist of relatively soft dirt that is easily dug from openpit mines. Australia produces more than one-third of the world's supply of bauxite. It takes about 4 lb (2 kg) of bauxite to produce 1 lb (0.5 kg) of aluminum metal. Caustic soda (sodium hydroxide) is used to dissolve the aluminum compounds found in the bauxite, separating them from the impurities. Depending on the composition of the bauxite ore, relatively small amounts of other chemicals may be used in the extraction

Aluminum is manufactured in two phases: the Bayer process of refining the bauxite ore to obtain aluminum oxide, and the Hall-Heroult process of smelting the aluminum oxide to release pure aluminum. of aluminum. Starch, lime, and sodium sulphide are some examples. Cryolite, a chemical compound composed of sodium, aluminum, and fluorine, is used as the electrolyte (current-conducting medium) in the smelting operation. Naturally occurring cryolite was once mined in Greenland, but the compound is now produced synthetically for use in the production of aluminum. Aluminum fluoride is added to lower the melting point of the electrolyte solution. The other major ingredient used in the smelting operation is carbon. Carbon electrodes transmit the electric current through the electrolyte. During the smelting operation, some of the carbon is consumed as it combines with oxygen to form carbon dioxide. In fact, about half a pound (0.2 kg) of carbon is used for every pound (2.2 kg) of aluminum

produced. Some of the carbon used in aluminum smelting is a byproduct of oil refining; additional carbon is obtained from coal. Because aluminum smelting involves passing an electric current through a molten electrolyte, it requires large amounts of electrical energy. On average, production of 2 lb (1 kg) of aluminum requires 15 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of energy. The cost of electricity represents about one-third of the cost of smelting aluminum.

The Manufacturing Process

Aluminum manufacture is accomplished in two phases: the Bayer process of refining the bauxite ore to obtain aluminum oxide, and the Hall-Heroult process of smelting the aluminum oxide to release pure aluminum.

The Bayer process

1 First, the bauxite ore is mechanically crushed. Then, the crushed ore is mixed with caustic soda and processed in a grinding mill to produce a slurry (a watery suspension) containing very fine particles of ore.

2 The slurry is pumped into a digester, a tank that functions like a pressure cooker. The slurry is heated to 230-520F (110-270C) under a pressure of 50 lb/in 2 (340 kPa). These conditions are maintained for a time ranging from half an hour to several hours. Additional caustic soda may be added to ensure that all aluminum-containing compounds are dissolved.

3 The hot slurry, which is now a sodium aluminate solution, passes through a series of flash tanks that reduce the pressure and recover heat that can be reused in the refining process.

4 The slurry is pumped into a settling tank. As the slurry rests in this tank, impurities that will not dissolve in the caustic soda settle to the bottom of the vessel. One manufacturer compares this process to fine sand settling to the bottom of a glass of sugar water; the sugar does not settle out because it is dissolved in the water, just as the aluminum in the settling tank remains dissolved in the caustic soda. The residue (called "red mud") that accumulates in

the bottom of the tank consists of fine sand, iron oxide, and oxides of trace elements like titanium.

5 After the impurities have settled out, the remaining liquid, which looks somewhat like coffee, is pumped through a series of cloth filters. Any fine particles of impurities that remain in the solution are trapped by the filters. This material is washed to recover alumina and caustic soda that can be reused.

6 The filtered liquid is pumped through a series of six-story-tall precipitation tanks. Seed crystals of alumina hydrate (alumina bonded to water molecules) are added through the top of each tank. The seed crystals grow as they settle through the liquid and dissolved alumina attaches to them.

7 The crystals precipitate (settle to the bottom of the tank) and are removed. After washing, they are transferred to a kiln for calcining (heating to release the water molecules that are chemically bonded to the alumina molecules). A screw conveyor moves a continuous stream of crystals into a rotating, cylindrical kiln that is tilted to allow gravity to move the material through it. A temperature of 2,000 F (1,100 C) drives off the water molecules, leaving anhydrous (waterless) alumina crystals. After leaving the kiln, the crystals pass through a cooler.

The Hall-Heroult process

Smelting of alumina into metallic aluminum takes place in a steel vat called a reduction pot. The bottom of the pot is lined with carbon, which acts as one electrode (conductor of electric current) of the system. The opposite electrodes consist of a set of carbon rods suspended above the pot; they are lowered into an electrolyte solution and held about 1.5 in (3.8 cm) above the surface of the molten aluminum that accumulates on the floor of the pot. Reduction pots are arranged in rows (potlines) consisting of 50-200 pots that are connected in series to form an electric circuit. Each potline can produce 66,000110,000 tons (60,000-100,000 metric tons) of aluminum per year. A typical smelting plant consists of two or three potlines.

8 Within the reduction pot, alumina crystals are dissolved in molten cryolite at a temperature of 1,760-1,780 F (960-970 C) to form an electrolyte solution that will conduct electricity from the carbon rods to the carbon-lined bed of the pot. A direct current (4-6 volts and 100,000-230,000 amperes) is passed through the

solution. The resulting reaction breaks the bonds between the aluminum and oxygen atoms in the alumina molecules. The oxygen that is released is attracted to the carbon rods, where it forms carbon dioxide. The freed aluminum atoms settle to the bottom of the pot as molten metal. The smelting process is a continuous one, with more alumina being added to the cryolite solution to replace the decomposed compound. A constant electric current is maintained. Heat generated by the flow of electricity at the bottom electrode keeps the contents of the pot in a liquid state, but a crust tends to form atop the molten electrolyte. Periodically, the crust is broken to allow more alumina to be added for processing. The pure molten aluminum accumulates at the bottom of the pot and is siphoned off. The pots are operated 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

9 A crucible is moved down the potline, collecting 9,000 lb (4,000 kg) of molten aluminum, which is 99.8% pure. The metal is transferred to a holding furnace and then cast (poured into molds) as ingots. One common technique is to pour the molten aluminum into a long, horizontal mold. As the metal moves through the mold, the exterior is cooled with water, causing the aluminum to solidify. The solid shaft emerges from the far end of the mold, where it is sawed at appropriate intervals to form ingots of the desired length. Like the smelting process itself, this casting process is also continuous.

Byproducts/Waste
Alumina, the intermediate substance that is produced by the Bayer process and that constitutes the raw material for the Hall-Heroult process, is also a useful final product. It is a white, powdery substance with a consistency that ranges from that of talcum powder to that of granulated sugar. It can be used in a wide range of products such as laundry detergents, toothpaste, and fluorescent light bulbs. It is an important ingredient in ceramic materials; for example, it is used to make false teeth, spark plugs, and clear ceramic windshields for military airplanes. An effective polishing compound, it is used to finish computer hard drives, among other products. Its chemical properties make it effective in many other applications, including catalytic converters and explosives. It is

even used in rocket fuel400,000 lb (180,000 kg) is consumed in every space shuttle launch. Approximately 10% of the alumina produced each year is used for applications other than making aluminum. The largest waste product generated in bauxite refining is the tailings (ore refuse) called "red mud." A refinery produces about the same amount of red mud as it does alumina (in terms of dry weight). It contains some useful substances, like iron, titanium, soda, and alumina, but no one has been able to develop an economical process for recovering them. Other than a small amount of red mud that is used commercially for coloring masonry, this is truly a waste product. Most refineries simply collect the red mud in an open pond that allows some of its moisture to evaporate; when the mud has dried to a solid enough consistency, which may take several years, it is covered with dirt or mixed with soil. Several types of waste products are generated by decomposition of carbon electrodes during the smelting operation. Aluminum plants in the United States create significant amounts of greenhouse gases, generating about 5.5 million tons (5 million metric tons) of carbon dioxide and 3,300 tons (3,000 metric tons) of perfluorocarbons (compounds of carbon and fluorine) each year. Approximately 120,000 tons (110,000 metric tons) of spent potlining (SPL) material is removed from aluminum reduction pots each year. Designated a hazardous material by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), SPL has posed a significant disposal problem for the industry. In 1996, the first in a planned series of recycling plants opened; these plants transform SPL into glass frit, an intermediate product from which glass and ceramics can be manufactured. Ultimately, the recycled SPL appears in such products as ceramic tile, glass fibers, and asphalt shingle granules.

The Future
Virtually all of the aluminum producers in the United States are members of the Voluntary Aluminum Industrial Partnership (VAIP), an organization that works closely with the EPA to find solutions to the pollution problems facing the industry. A major focus of research is the effort to develop an inert (chemically inactive) electrode material

for aluminum reduction pots. A titanium-diboride-graphite compound shows significant promise. Among the benefits expected to come when this new technology is perfected are elimination of the greenhouse gas emissions and a 25% reduction in energy use during the smelting operation.

How Aluminum is Produced

Stage 1 Converting Bauxite to Alumina
The following drawings illustrate the five major steps in recovering alumina from bauxite.
FACT: Four tons of bauxite are required to produce 2 tons of alumina.

STEP 1- Crushing and Grinding: Alumina recovery begins by passing the bauxite through screens to sort it by size. It is then crushed to produce relatively uniformly sized material. The ore is then fed into large grinding mills and mixed with a caustic soda solution (sodium hydroxide) at high temperature and pressure. The grinding mill rotates like a huge drum while steel rods - rolling around loose inside the mill - grind the ore to an even finer consistency. The process is a lot like a kitchen blender only much slower and much larger. The material finally discharged from the mill is called slurry. The resulting liquor contains a solution of sodium aluminate and undissolved bauxite residues containing iron,silicon, and titanium. These residues - commonly referred to

as "red mud" - gradually sink to the bottom of the tank and are removed.

STEP 2-Digesting: The slurry is pumped to a digester where the chemical reaction to dissolve the alumina takes place. In the digester the slurry - under 50 pounds per square inch pressure - is heated to 300 Fahrenheit (145 Celsius). It remains in the digester under those conditions from 30 minutes to several hours. More caustic soda is added to dissolve aluminum containing compounds in the slurry. Undesirable compounds either don't dissolve in the caustic soda, or combine with other compounds to create a scale on equipment which must be periodically cleaned. The digestion process produces a sodium aluminate solution. Because all of this takes place in a pressure cooker, the slurry is pumped into a series of "flash tanks" to reduce the pressure and heat before it is transferred into "settling tanks."

STEP 3-Settling: Settling is achieved primarily by using gravity, although some chemicals are added to aid the process. Just as a glass of sugar water with fine sand suspended in it will separate out over time, the impurities in the slurry - things like sand and iron and other trace elements that do not dissolve - will eventually settle to the bottom. The liquor at the top of the tank (which looks like coffee) is now directed through a series of filters. After washing to recover alumina and caustic soda, the remaining red mud is pumped into large storage ponds where it is dried by evaporation. The alumina in the still warm liquor consists of tiny, suspended crystals. However there are still some very fine, solid impurities that must be removed. Just as coffee filters keep the grounds out of your cup, the filters here work the same way.

The giant-sized filters consist of a series of "leaves" - big cloth filters over steel frames - and remove much of the remaining solids in the liquor. The material caught by the filters is known as a "filter cake" and is washed to remove alumina and caustic soda. The filtered liquor - a sodium aluminate solution - is then cooled and pumped to the "precipitators."

STEP 4-Precipitation: Imagine a tank as tall as a six-story building. Now imagine row after row of those tanks called precipitators. The clear sodium aluminate from the settling and filtering operation is pumped into these precipitators. Fine particles of alumina - called "seed crystals" (alumina hydrate) - are added to start the precipitation of pure alumina particles as the liquor cools. Alumina crystals begin to grow around the seeds, then settle to the bottom of the tank where they are removed and transferred to "thickening tanks." Finally, it is filtered again then transferred by conveyor to the "calcination kilns."

STEP 5-Calcination: Calcination is a heating process to remove the chemically combined water from the alumina hydrate. That's why, once the hydrated alumina is calcined, it is referred to as anhydrous alumina. "Anhydrous" means "without water." From precipitation, the hydrate is filtered and washed to rinse away impurities and remove moisture. A continuous conveyor system delivers the hydrate into the calcining kiln. The calcining kiln is brick-lined inside and gas-fired to a temperature of 2,000 F or 1,100 C. It slowly rotates (to make sure the alumina dries evenly) and is mounted on a tilted foundation which allows the alumina to move through it to cooling eqipment. (Newer plants use a method called fluid bed calcining where alumina particles are suspended above a screen by hot air and calcined.)

The result is a white powder like that shown below: pure alumina. The caustic soda is returned to the beginning of the process and used again.

At this point, the alumina is ready for conversion into aluminum at a smelter. Alumina is also used in making chemical and ceramics.

Stage 2 Converting Alumina to Aluminum

The alumina must now be converted to metallic aluminum. Here is how that is accomplished.
FACT: Two tons of alumina are required to make one ton of aluminum.

Smelting: In 1886, two 22-year-old scientists on opposite sides of the Atlantic, Charles Hall of the USA and Paul L.T. Heroult of France, made the same discovery - molten cryolite (a sodium aluminum fluoride mineral) could be used to dissolve alumina and the resulting chemical reaction would produce metallic aluminum. The Hall-Heroult process remains in use today. The Hall-Heroult process takes place in a large carbon or graphite lined steel container called a " reduction pot". In most plants, the pots are lined up in long rows, called potlines. The key to the chemical reaction necessary to convert the alumina to metallic aluminum is the running of an electrical current through the cryolite/alumina mixture. The process requires the use of direct current (DC) - not the alternating current (AC) used in homes. The immense amounts of power required to produce aluminum is the reason why aluminum plants are almost always located in areas where affordable electrical power is readily available. Some experts maintain that one percent of all the energy used in the United States is used in the making of aluminum.

The electrical voltage used in a typical reduction pot is only 5.25 volts, but the amperage is VERY high - generally in the range of 100,000 to 150,000 amperes or more. The current flows between a carbon anode (positively charged), made of petroleum coke and pitch, and a cathode (negatively charged), formed by the thick carbon or graphite lining of the pot. When the electric current passes through the mixture, the carbon of the anode combines with the oxygen in the alumina. The chemical reaction produces metallic aluminum and carbon dioxide. The molten aluminum settles to the bottom of the pot where it is periodically syphoned off into crucibles while the carbon dioxide - a gas - escapes. Very little cryolite is lost in the process, and the alumina is constantly replenished from storage containers above the reduction pots. The metal is now ready to be forged, turned into alloys, or extruded into the shapes and forms necessary to make appliances, electronics, automobiles, airplanes cans and hundreds of other familiar, useful items. Aluminum is formed at about 900 C, but once formed has a melting point of only 660 C. In some smelters this spare heat is used to melt recycled metal, which is then blended with the new metal. Recycled metal requires only 5 per cent of the energy required to make new metal. Blending recycled metal with new metal allows considerable energy savings, as well as the efficient use of the extra heat available. When it comes to quality, there is no difference between primary metal and recycled metal. The smelting process required to produce aluminum from the alumina is continuous the potline is usually kept in production 24 hours a day year-round. A smelter cannot easily be stopped and restarted. If production is interrupted by a power supply failure of more than four hours, the metal in the pots will solidify, often requiring an expensive rebuilding process. The cost of building a typical, modern smelter is about $1.6 billion. Most smelters produce aluminum that is 99.7% pure - acceptable for most applications. However, super pure aluminum (99.99%) is required for some special applications, typically those where high ductility or conductivity is required. It should be noted that what may appear to be marginal differences in the purities of smelter grade aluminum and super purity aluminum can result in significant changes in the properties of the metal.

FACT:

About 6.2 kWH (kilowatt hours) of electricity is required to produce one pound of aluminum from alumina.

Bernoulli Equation

A non-turbulent, perfect, compressible, and barotropic fluid undergoing steady motion is governed by the Bernoulli Equation:

where g is the gravity acceleration constant (9.81 m/s2; 32.2 ft/s2), V is the velocity of the fluid, and z is the height above an arbitrary datum. C remains constant along any streamline in the flow, but varies from streamline to streamline. If the flow isirrotational, then C has the same value for all streamlines. The function is the "pressure per density" in the fluid, and follows from the barotropic equation of state, p = p(). For an incompressible fluid, the function Bernoulli Equation becomes: simplifies to p/, and the incompressible