
Aluminium: The metal that just keeps on giving - Nux
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25020651
======
lancewiggs
I've worked in aluminium smelters. Three interesting things:

They are hugely energy intensive and a good way of exporting cheap electricity
from otherwise hard to connect locations. The very bottom of New Zealand, The
North east of South Africa as well as Mozambique, the Middle East and of
course Norway and Russia. Hydroelectric power, free once the dam is built, is
ideal, but oil (Middle East) and coal (Southern Africa) are also used.

They are generally located next to a port so that bulk shipments of alumina
and carbon (coal) are easily transferred. The carbon is used to make the
anodes and cathodes used in the giant 'pots' where the reaction happens.

The metal itself is alloyed up in final form, but is generally shipped from
the smelters in pure ignots, at a price related to the LME quoted price.

And a bonus - we were forbidden to have aluminium cans on site. If they ended
up in a pot (full of molten bubbling alumina, cryolite and aluminium) then any
fluid left inside the can would get super heated and result in an explosion.

~~~
mkingston
I _knew_ I recognised your user name (maybe the fact you mentioned NZ first
triggered something in my mind). Quite off topic, but you may be able to
answer this: do you have any idea whether shutting down Tiwai Point would
indeed affect NZ electricity prices significantly? It's kind of moot now
(ugh), but I'm curious.

~~~
lancewiggs
It would release demand (15% of total) back to the market, so yes it would. It
would also reduce our CO2 emissions, lose jobs from an area that needs them
and reduce GDP from exporting that Aluminium and increase profits for the
newly sold-down electricity companies. And so on. It's all quite complex but a
good analysis should show the net gain or loss. But my take is that the plant
can be a lot more efficient.

~~~
mkingston
That's exactly what I had expected. I had a suspicion that Manapouri may not
have been adequately connected to the grid for sufficient power distribution
in the very short term; but even more so, I thought National's assertion that
closing down Tiwai wouldn't affect power prices was quite likely disingenuous.

It is quite a complex issue, yes. Looks like treasury was fairly firmly
against subsidising the smelter from an economic standpoint. Of course there
are social issues, too.

More efficient how? Power consumption? Or just better margins? If power
consumption; presumedly not enough to significantly alter electricity prices
for others? Is there anything I can read on this?

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mchannon
The spelling with more legitimacy is Aluminum.

Sir Humphrey Davy, its discoverer, called it Aluminum when he published his
work Chemical Philosophy in 1812.

Some anonymous dilettante (anonymous to this day!) thought, upon reviewing
said book, it sounded better (more classical) with the extra I and syllable.

Everybody calls Aluminum's oxide Alumina, not Aluminia.

Nobody else seems to feel the need to rename Platinum Platinium, or Molybdenum
Molybdenium, or Tantalum Tantalium.

We Americans too often like to mock other cultures for being different, and
our basis is usually wrong when we do. Maybe mocking our pronunciation and
spelling isn't a habit you want to hold on to.

~~~
dsowers
Thank you for this explanation. I'm always telling people the same thing. We
should respect the name which the discoverer gave to it.

~~~
GunlogAlm
> We should respect the name which the discoverer gave to it. Why?

I have a feeling if Americans said "aluminium" and Brits said "aluminum", you
wouldn't be saying this. I see no reason why the discoverer's naming deserves
any special status.

~~~
thaumasiotes
> I see no reason why the discoverer's naming deserves any special status.

At its most basic, this is one of the main currencies of science. Remember
what happened with apatosaurus / brontosaurus?

This is a practice that most people will agree without persuasion is "fair",
that certain people care about a great deal, and that costs society nothing.
What's wrong with it?

------
js2
Just don't spill any mercury on it.

[http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2004-09/amazing-
rustin...](http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2004-09/amazing-rusting-
aluminum)

~~~
bsimpson
After reading both your article and the OP, I'm very keen to see a video of
mercury spilled on sapphire.

~~~
thaumasiotes
Well, sapphire is quite easy to obtain, and I believe that's also true of
mercury. I'd be a little hesitant to expose mercury to the air near myself,
though. :/

If you know how to do it safely，go for it!

~~~
regularfry
Liquid mercury is quite boringly safe. There are a bunch of entertainingly
toxic (and mobile) compounds, though.

~~~
VLM
The vapor pressure goes up surprisingly fast with temp, such that a
contaminated cold room temp in the winter might be "eh" but it could get bad
on a hot sunny summer day. Modern home insulation probably doesn't help much.

Another comment is sulfur is cheap and widely available at garden stores etc
and cinnabar toxicity is greatly exaggerated, because historically anyone who
mined it, smelted it, and the smelting is a very effective way to get killed
just by being nearby. I wouldn't eat it intentionally, etc, but after sulfur
neutralization its mostly harmless. Its a much lower vapor pressure and
relatively stable compound compared to elemental Hg.

And it'll amalgamate with gold jewelry, if I recall. I'm old enough to have
played with Hg bare handed as a kid. Its kind of like gunpowder, respect it
and you'll be safe, make a habit in your life of doing dumb things and nothing
is ever safe.

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pstuart
Next up should be titanium:
[http://www.defensenews.com/article/20110720/DEFSECT04/107200...](http://www.defensenews.com/article/20110720/DEFSECT04/107200305/Breakthroughs-
Promise-Cheaper-Titanium)

~~~
sjwright
Or as Americans like to call it, _Titanum._

~~~
Lagged2Death
Did you know that "Aluminum" was the discoverer's own spelling, and was
actually used in Britain soon after the naming? "Aluminium" was an arbitrary
revision made because influential people just liked it better.

In other words, the British spelling was just a matter of British cultural
hegemony at the time, just as American spellings are matters of American
cultural hegemony today.

[http://www.worldwidewords.org/articles/aluminium.htm](http://www.worldwidewords.org/articles/aluminium.htm)

I didn't know any of this until just now.

~~~
btbuilder
The link you posted says:

"Sir Humphry made a bit of a mess of naming this new element, at first
spelling it alumium (this was in 1807) then changing it to aluminum, and
finally settling on aluminium in 1812."

To me it reads that British academics (Sir Humphry's peers) prefered the -ium
spelling. It doesn't say they used political pressure to force him to change
it.

While the use of both spellings were in almost equal use in the general
British and US populations for a long time, the article hypothesises that the
-um spelling became dominant in the US because of Webster's -um entry.

------
lifeisstillgood

      Indeed, there is a growing industry for manufacturing 
      industrial sapphires the size of a large bucket, suitable 
      for use in bullet-proof glass, aeroplane windows and soon 
      - unscratchable smartphone displays.
    

seriously - Transparent Aluminum :-)

~~~
venomsnake
Plain old corundum - you can get pieces of it the size of your fist if you see
what is left after welding railroad tracks with termite.

~~~
willdonie
"... welding railroad tracks with _termite_."

Sheesh! With the above post the state of spelling on the Internet reaches a
new low.

~~~
Samuel_Michon
If anyone else was wondering, it was supposed to read ‘thermite’. (I had to
DDG it, and then still, I had never heard of the stuff.)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermite](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermite)

~~~
dllthomas
Thermite is amazing stuff. There's some thought that part of the reason the
Hindenburg burned so much so fast was a thermite reaction in the stuff it was
painted with:

[http://dsc.discovery.com/tv-
shows/mythbusters/videos/hindenb...](http://dsc.discovery.com/tv-
shows/mythbusters/videos/hindenburg-minimyth.htm)

------
fzltrp
Even storage of the metal may bring benefits:
[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/21/business/a-shuffle-of-
alum...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/21/business/a-shuffle-of-aluminum-but-
to-banks-pure-gold.html).

------
dhughes
A PBS show on a few nights ago had a history of aluminum and its uses. In the
show it mentioned aluminum is too soft when pure so copper was added but the
discoverer found even after copper was added it was still too soft, he got fed
up went away for a few days and when he came back the alloy was harder; age
hardening.

My phone was damaged and I wondered if my keys scratched my SG3 smartphone,
Gorilla Glass has a hardness from what I have read anywhere from a 3 to a 6
but corundum (oxidized aluminum) has a Mohs hardness of 9. Then I found out
scratch resistance is not hardness. I think the SG3 screen's scratch
resistance is significantly inferior to the SG2 screen.

------
Stochasticity
While it's true that there a wide number of applications, and Aluminum is
theoretically perpetually recyclable, there is still a small problem. When an
alloy is formed and elements added to pure Al they are exceptionally difficult
to remove. This means that for alloy-specific applications the recycled
'aluminum' must have extra elements added to create the alloy desired.

With continued recycling [over a long period of time] there is concern that
alloys will converge upon a final aluminum alloy and we will no longer be able
to create new application specific alloys.

------
rasur
I've always liked Aluminium in a powdered form and mixed with iron oxide in
the correct proportion: Thermite :D

~~~
zimbu668
Make sure you know what you're doing. This happened in the apartment building
we were living in last year:
[http://www.denverpost.com/kiszla/ci_20952038/apartment-
fire-...](http://www.denverpost.com/kiszla/ci_20952038/apartment-fire-at-
willow-run-near-128th-and)

~~~
rasur
Thanks! As far as I'm concerned, Thermite is a wide-open-spaces/designated
area, no-children-or-small-animals kind of substance. Definitely not for home
use (well, unless your objective _is_ to burn the house down..).

------
happycube
That Sapphire iPhone glass sure seems a lot like Transparent Aluminum, now...
"hello, iPhone"

~~~
Samuel_Michon
The iPhone display is covered by Corning’s Gorilla Glass (not sapphire). The
iPhone 4S’ TouchID sensor (the home button) is covered by a small synthetic
sapphire pane. However, given Apple’s substantial investment in GT Advanced,
the company might use sapphire for larger panes in the future.

[http://www.macrumors.com/2013/11/04/apple-to-build-
new-700-e...](http://www.macrumors.com/2013/11/04/apple-to-build-
new-700-employee-sapphire-glass-manufacturing-plant-in-arizona/)

[http://www.macrumors.com/2013/11/12/apples-new-
manufacturing...](http://www.macrumors.com/2013/11/12/apples-new-
manufacturing-partner-gt-advanced-uses-particle-accelerator-to-cut-sapphire-
glass-production-costs/)

~~~
Samuel_Michon
/u/aivaomo is hellbanned, but here is his reply to my earlier comment:

 _Make that the 5S’ home button /TouchID sensor. Plus the outermost element of
the rear camera lens is rather sensibly sapphire, IIRC._

------
tdj
I'm surprise no-one mentioned ALICE - aluminium + ice (water). A paste-like
substance that's quite a powerful rocket propellant.

[http://news.discovery.com/tech/nanoaluminum-rocket-
fuel.html](http://news.discovery.com/tech/nanoaluminum-rocket-fuel.html)

------
znowi
Would the recycled aluminium Range Rover cost less?

~~~
bnegreve
It seems that they already are. From the article:

> _Novelis has seen a 25% increase in demand from the motor industry in the
> last year, most of it coming from one of its biggest customers, Jaguar Land
> Rover, which has just begun manufacturing Range Rovers with aluminium._

> _Currently, Novelis obtains almost 50% of its aluminium used to make a new
> Range Rover from junk - empty cans, scrapped vehicles, demolition sites -
> and it aims to raise that to 80% by 2020._

It makes a lot of sens, if you ask me.

~~~
Scramblejams
The question is, would the recycled aluminum (I'm in the US) Range Rover cost
less than what?

1) Less than a Range Rover made of aluminum which came straight from bauxite?
Assumedly the answer is yes, otherwise the motivation for recycling would be
unclear.

2) Less than a Range Rover made conventionally, that is, out of steel? Very
unlikely, steel is really, really cheap.

~~~
scott_karana
Steel is cheaper, but unfavourable in modern vehicles, generally, due to its
weight.

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gngeal
_" Budoucnost patří aluminiu!"_

\-- Jára da Cimrman

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Swannie
Wow. Learned a lot from the linked shared here. Thanks.

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veganarchocap
Good guy Aluminium.

