Complete 5 pages APA formatted article: The Industrial Production of Aluminium and Its Recycling.

Complete 5 pages APA formatted article: The Industrial Production of Aluminium and Its Recycling. Industrial production of aluminum starts with bauxite mining and refining. The bauxite ore is crushed at the mining site. Then, the crushed materials are screened and stockpiled prior to the delivery to an alumina plant. Some mining companies wash crushed cores and remove unwanted materials, like silica and clay, from it. This not only upgrades the quality of crushed bauxite ore but its price as well. In the alumina plant, the crushed core is further crushed to a particle size mostly efficient for alumina extraction before treating it with hot (175 °C ) sodium hydroxide liquor (Bayer process).

The alumina produced by the Bayer process undergoes Hall–Héroult process to produce aluminum. After the digestion process, the insoluble part of the bauxite called red mud, and fine solids are removed before precipitating the aluminum trihydrate crystals. Then, the crystals are calcined in fluidized bed calciners or rotary kilns to produce alumina (Al2O3). In the production of primary aluminum, electrolytic reduction of alumina is being done. The alumina is broken into aluminum and oxygen by dissolving it in a molten bath of fluoride compounds. An electric current is passed through the bath and the dissociated oxygen gas reacts with carbon in the electrode, producing carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide. On the other hand, the molten aluminum goes to the bottom of individual pots or cells. The aluminum in the cells is removed under vacuum into tapping crucibles (Kogel et al., 2006).

Secondary aluminum production makes use of dross, chips, and scraps as raw materials. These materials undergo shredding, magnetic separation, drying, sieving, and so on in order to take out undesirable materials that affect air emissions and aluminum quality. The collected aluminum materials are subjected to smelting in rotary kilns under a salt cover.