For Students
|
About Aluminum and Industry
By fabricating aluminum extrusions, you can create a unique design that fulfills all your anticipated expectations and project demands. With reasonable tooling costs and limitless design possibilities, there is no limit to where your imagination can take you. |
 |
You can integrate a range of functions into the extrusions that will make it easier to fabricate and will also simplify the set up. Your design can add properties such as low weight combined with high strength, corrosion resistance and surface finish, to the final product. The extrusion process is simple: one heated round aluminum bar is pressed through a die, and out comes an extrusion, which is shaped like the designed hole in the die.
Aluminum is the second most widely used metal, but its rapidly increasing growth in usage surpasses even iron. This is due to its unique combination of characteristics. The low weight (density of 2.7 Kg / dm³) and high strength (tensile strength between 70 and 700 N / mm²), malleability, simplicity of fabrication, corrosion resistance, and the good ability to conduct heat and electricity are some of the most important characteristics of aluminum. Furthermore, aluminum is very easy to recycle.
From Bauxite to Recyclable Aluminum
There are plenty of raw materials for the production of aluminum. No less than 8% of the earth's crust consists of aluminum compounds that come in a variety of forms. The most important raw material in the process of making aluminum is bauxite. If we continue mining bauxite at the same rate as the present one, the deposits of bauxite will last 200 – 400 years of production (this does not include an increase in recycling).The bauxite, containing oxides of aluminum, iron, and silicon, is first purified into alumina. Aluminum comes out of alumina through electrolysis.
Used aluminum products have great importance as a raw material for production. In principle, all available aluminum can be recycled. By sensible sorting, aluminum scrap can be turned into new products over and over again. Even though the aluminum is used again and again, its characteristics never change, which is unique compared to other materials.
Environmental Effects
All industrial activity uses up natural resources and has an impact on the environment. This also happens when producing aluminum. However, production of aluminum often causes a positive impact on the environment compared with the use of alternative materials. For example, the use of more energy in the production process of the aluminum parts of a car will be made up for eight times during the life of the vehicle (through reduction in gasoline due to a lighter car, for example).
|
Aluminum Statistics and Information
|
|
Industry Information and Resources
| |
Updated: 2007-08-13