Alcoa

Aluminum History: "Unfinished Rainbows" circa 1949 ALCOA Aluminum Company of America

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• published: 22 Dec 2014
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more at http://scitech.quickfound.net/geology_news_and_links.html Dramatized history of the beginnings of the aluminum (aluminium) metal industry. Public domain film from the Prelinger Archives, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and mild video noise reduction applied. The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium Aluminium (or aluminum; see spelling differences) is a chemical element in the boron group with symbol Al and atomic number 13. It is a silvery white, soft, ductile metal. Aluminium is the third most abundant element (after oxygen and silicon), and the most abundant metal in the Earth's crust. It makes up about 8% by weight of the Earth's solid surface. Aluminium metal is so chemically reactive that native specimens are rare and limited to extreme reducing environments. Instead, it is found combined in over 270 different minerals. The chief ore of aluminium is bauxite. Aluminium is remarkable for the metal's low density and for its ability to resist corrosion due to the phenomenon of passivation. Structural components made from aluminium and its alloys are vital to the aerospace industry and are important in other areas of transportation and structural materials. The most useful compounds of aluminium, at least on a weight basis, are the oxides and sulfates. Despite its prevalence in the environment, no known form of life uses aluminium salts metabolically... General use Aluminium is the most widely used non-ferrous metal. Global production of aluminium in 2005 was 31.9 million tonnes. It exceeded that of any other metal except iron (837.5 million tonnes). Forecast for 2012 is 42–45 million tonnes, driven by rising Chinese output. Aluminium is almost always alloyed, which markedly improves its mechanical properties, especially when tempered. For example, the common aluminium foils and beverage cans are alloys of 92% to 99% aluminium. The main alloying agents are copper, zinc, magnesium, manganese, and silicon (e.g., duralumin) and the levels of these other metals are in the range of a few percent by weight... The metal was first produced in 1825 in an impure form by Danish physicist and chemist Hans Christian Ørsted. He reacted anhydrous aluminium chloride with potassium amalgam, yielding a lump of metal looking similar to tin. Friedrich Wöhler was aware of these experiments and cited them, but after redoing the experiments of Ørsted he concluded that this metal was pure potassium. He conducted a similar experiment in 1827 by mixing anhydrous aluminium chloride with potassium and yielded aluminium. Wöhler is generally credited with isolating aluminium (Latin alumen, alum). Further, Pierre Berthier discovered aluminium in bauxite ore. Henri Etienne Sainte-Claire Deville improved Wöhler's method in 1846. As described in his 1859 book, aluminium trichloride could be reduced by sodium, which was more convenient and less expensive than potassium used by Wöhler. In the mid 1880s, aluminium metal was exceedingly difficult to produce, which made pure aluminium more valuable than gold. So celebrated was the metal that bars of aluminium were exhibited at the Exposition Universelle of 1855. Napoleon III of France is reputed to held a banquet where the most honored guests were given aluminium utensils, while the others made do with gold. Aluminium was selected as the material to use for the 100 ounces (2.8 kg) capstone of the Washington Monument in 1884, a time when one ounce (30 grams) cost the daily wage of a common worker on the project (in 1884 about $1 for 10 hours of labor; today, a construction worker in the US working on such a project might earn $25-$35 per hour and therefore around $300 in an equivalent single 10-hour day). The capstone, which was set in place on 6 December 1884, in an elaborate dedication ceremony, was the largest single piece of aluminium cast at the time. The Cowles companies supplied aluminium alloy in quantity in the United States and England using smelters like the furnace of Carl Wilhelm Siemens by 1886... Hall-Heroult process: availability of cheap aluminium metal Charles Martin Hall of Ohio in the U.S. and Paul Héroult of France independently developed the Hall-Héroult electrolytic process that facilitated large-scale production of metallic aluminium. This process remains in use today. In 1888 with the financial backing of Alfred E. Hunt, the Pittsburgh Reduction Company started, today it is known as Alcoa. Héroult's process was in production by 1889 in Switzerland at Aluminium Industrie, now Alcan, and at British Aluminium, now Luxfer Group and Alcoa, by 1896 in Scotland...