Story of Aluminium

Global society faces a great challenge to shift human economic activity and lifestyles on to a sustainable path in the 21st century, including meeting threats from climate change.  The story of the aluminium industry over the decades ahead must be one of how it is part of the solution for a sustainable future. 

This century began with an estimated 6 billion people on the planet, up six-fold in just 200 years from 1 billion in the year 1800.  The United Nations currently expects global population to peak around 2050 at about 9 billion.  

The sustainability challenge shared by all nations, industries and communities is to provide not only for the basic needs of all of these people, but to meet their expectations for improving quality of life.  Crucially, this socio-economic progress must be achieved while ensuring that the natural environment remains ecologically viable and able to meet the needs of future generations as well as current ones. 

 

The products of human ingenuity, including industrial creations such as the versatile metal aluminium, have a vital role to play in successfully addressing this sustainability challenge.  To do its part, the aluminium industry needs to minimize environmental, social and economic negatives and maximize the positives across its life-cycle – from pre-mining to post-consumer stages - delivering a clear net benefit to society.  

 
Why Aluminium?

The demand for aluminium products is increasing year by year, so why is aluminium a metal in such demand and what is its role in the lives of future generations? 

 

Aluminium is a young material, and in the little more than a century since its first commercial production, it has become the world’s second most used metal after steel.  Aluminium is the metal of choice for leading designers, architects and engineers, all of whom are looking for a material which combines functionality and cost-effectiveness with forward looking form and design potential. 

 

Aluminium is an extraordinarily versatile material.  The range of forms it can take (castings, extrusions and tubes, sheet & plate, foil, powder, forgings etc) and variety of surface finishes available (coatings, anodizing, polishing etc) means it lends itself to a wide range of products, many of which we use every day of our lives.

 

As well as its versatile form, the metal’s light weight (a third of steel) and numerous material qualities – represented by a wide range of alloys – mean that products have been designed for use in all areas of modern life.  It is a good conductor of electricity (one kilogram of aluminium cable can carry twice as much electricity as one kilogram of copper) and most overhead and many underground transmission lines are made of aluminium.  It transmits conducted heat and reflects radiant heat, making it an excellent medium from which to produce cooking utensils and foils, radiators and building insulation.  Its strength, combined with low density, make it ideal for transport and packaging applications.  Aluminium is a unique metal: strong, durable, flexible, impermeable, lightweight, corrosion-resistant and 100 percent recyclable. 

 

Aluminium is the third most abundant element in the earth's crust and constitutes 7.3% by mass. In nature however it only exists in very stable combinations with other materials (particularly as silicates and oxides). While there were some historical mentions of aluminium use, it was not until 1808 that its existence was first established. It then took many years of painstaking research to "unlock" the metal from its ore - the hard, reddish and clay-like bauxite. Further years of experimentation finally, in 1854, saw the development of a viable, commercial production process.

 

Aluminium is a young metal, having only been produced commercially for 153 years. Despite the fact that copper, lead and tin have been in use for thousands of years, today more aluminium is produced than all other non-ferrous metals combined. Its unique combination of properties makes it suitable for myriad applications. It has become the world's second most used metal after steel. Annual primary production of aluminium in 2006 was around 34 million tonnes and recycled production around 16 million tonnes. The total of some 50 million tonnes compares with 17 million tonnes of copper, 8 million tonnes of lead and 0.4 million tonnes of tin.

 

Aluminium is part of the solution for a Sustainable Future:

Aluminium is a unique metal; strong, durable, flexible, impermeable and light-weight, it does not rust and is 100 percent recyclable.  It comes in a variety of surface finishes and can take many forms, allowing its use in a vast array of products.

 

First produced in 1888, aluminium has become the second most-used metal in the world after iron.  Nearly three-quarters of all aluminium ever made remains in use today, representing a growing ‘energy and resource bank’, and the metal can be reused endlessly.

 

Examples of areas where aluminium helps people and the economy to operate effectively and efficiently include air, road, rail and sea transport; food and medicine; packaging; construction; electronics and electricity transmission.

 

By working continuously to minimize environmental negatives and maximize positives from having aluminium in the world’s industrial life-cycle, the IAI has committed to ensuring that it is part of the solution for a sustainable future. 

 

Sustainable growth for aluminium industry
The aluminium industry is committed to securing business success and continued growth towards a more sustainable global economy of the future. 

 

It will achieve this by progressively improving its environmental, occupational health and safety performance, and by increasing its positive socioeconomic contribution through its ‘Aluminium for Future Generations’ Sustainable Development Programme.

 

This programme of continuous improvement, overseen by the IAI, whose Member companies are responsible for over 70% of global aluminium production, comprises 13 voluntary objectives, covering all key phases of aluminium’s life cycle from pre-mining to post-consumer.  Data is being gathered against 22 performance indicators and it is planned to increase the number of voluntary objectives further in the future.

 

Headline objectives of the programme include best practice in workplace health and safety, environmental and safety management systems, mine rehabilitation, water and energy efficiency, emissions reductions including greenhouse gases, and recycling of aluminium. 

 

Climate change is industry’s No.  1 environment issue
Climate change is the paramount environmental issue for the global industry.  The full process of manufacturing new stocks of aluminium is responsible for 1% of the global human-induced greenhouse gas emissions that scientists with the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) identify as a cause of unnaturally accelerated rates of global warming. 

 

The industry employs a lifecycle approach to address the challenges of climate change, focusing not only on the energy required to produce aluminium products but also on the energy savings to be made through their use and reuse.  It is in the use phase that the majority of energy is used and/or saved (e.g. during the useful life of cars, buildings, aircraft, etc).  The high strength-to-weight ratio of aluminium plays a crucial role in producing lighter vehicles and other forms of transport, reducing fuel consumption without compromising performance and safety.  The use of lightweight aluminium components in a vehicle can save six to twelve times the energy taken to produce the primary aluminium used in its construction.  Up to 8% fuel savings can be realized for every 10% reduction in weight.  One kilogram of aluminium, used to replace heavier materials in a car or light truck, has the potential to eliminate 20kg of CO2 over the lifetime of the vehicle.  For other vehicles, such as trains, ferries and aircraft, the potential savings are even greater.

 

Climate change is a challenge that the aluminium industry shares with every business and everyone who participates in the global economy.  As the world moves to combat climate change, the aluminium industry is moving too.  With its immense versatility, smart uses of aluminium will be an important part of finding solutions across many applications, and the market for aluminium will grow and diversify.

 

The global aluminium industry has therefore developed a four-pronged voluntary strategy to meet the challenges of climate change, which encompasses the full lifecycle of aluminium from production, to primary use, to recycling and reuse:

1. Reduce greenhouse gas emissions from aluminium production;
2. Increase energy efficiency in aluminium production;
3. Maximize used-product collection, recycling and reuse;
4. Promote the light-weighting of vehicles.

 

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About Aluminium

But is it Aluminium or Aluminum?

 Derived from the Latin ALUMEN for ALUM (Potassium aluminium sulphate). In 1761 French Chemist Louis-Bernard Guyton de Morveau proposed that ALUMINE for the base material of ALUM. De Morveau was instrumental in setting up a standardised system for chemical nomenclature and often collaborated with Antoine Lavoisier, who in 1787, suggested that ALUMINE was the oxide of a previously undiscovered metal.

In 1808 Sir Humphrey Davy proposed the name ALUMIUM for the metal. This rather unwieldy name was soon replaced by ALUMINUM and later the word ALUMINIUM was adopted by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemists in order to conform with the "ium" ending of most elements. By the mid-1800s both spellings were in use. The patents of both Hall and Héroult refer to ALUMINIUM and the company Hall helped set up was originally called the Pittsburgh ALUMINIUM Company. It was shortly renamed the Pittsburgh Reduction Company and in the USA the metal gradually began to be known only as ALUMINUM (in 1907 Hall's company finally became the ALUMINUM Company of America). 

In 1925 the American Chemical Society decided to use the name ALUMINUM in their official publications. Most of the world has kept the I in ALUMINIUM but it is interesting to note that the name for the metal's oxide, ALUMINA has been universally accepted over its more convoluted alternatives, ALUMINE and ALUMINIA. Both ALUMINIUM and ALUMINUM have an equal claim to etymological and historical justification, and it seems that the difference in both pronunciation and spelling is likely to stay with us for the foreseeable future!