What Is Aluminum (Or Alumin)?

Aluminum may be one of the most widely-used nonferrous metals, yet you likely haven’t come into direct contact with pure aluminium due to its reactivity with oxygen and due to natural occurence in metallic form.

American Charles Martin Hall and Frenchman Paul Heroult’s discovery of the Hall-Heroult process in 1886 enabled extraction of soft and lightweight silvery metal from ore bauxite via this soft extraction method, thus giving people access to seeing what it looks like!

Origin

Aluminum, with an atomic number 13, is a relatively rare element and almost never found pure in nature, typically appearing as oxides or silicates that must be processed to obtain metal form. At first, scientists did not realize that alum (potassium aluminum sulphate), commonly used as an astringent in medicine, was actually composed of unknown metal compounds. Oersted discovered aluminum metal by reducing alumina (aluminum oxide) with potassium amalgam in 1825, and British chemist Humphry Davy later coined the name alumium for it, like potassium and sodium. But it wasn’t until commercial production became feasible in late 1800s that people actually began using its new name widely.

At first, this new metal was so scarce and costly that few people used it. By the early 1900s however, it had become the world’s most widely used nonferrous metal. Being both strong and lightweight makes it perfect for packaging food and beverages or building transportation vehicles such as cars, airplanes and bicycles.

Contrary to other metals, aluminum is nontoxic and nonmagnetic, as well as corrosion resistant and nonsparking; making it an excellent choice for electrical conductors. Furthermore, its recyclable nature makes it popular with manufacturers who produce products such as beverage cans or automobiles.

Due to its lightness and durability, aluminum is used in everything from cookware and baking utensils to windows and doors construction, industrial applications, automobile bodies and airplane wings as well as foil and paint production. Aluminum’s low price makes it an essential material in modern economies; its softness can be addressed by hardening aluminum using an aluminization process; this can increase durability significantly.

Properties

Aluminum (Al) is a light silvery metal with excellent physical and chemical properties, including superior strength-to-weight ratio and corrosion resistance. Thanks to these qualities, aluminum has become the most commonly used nonferrous metal and recyclable metal overall. Furthermore, its unique atomic structure of FCC gives the metal various unique physical and chemical characteristics.

Aluminum comes from two primary sources. Bauxite ore is the source for around 99% of world aluminum production, forming red-brown mineral deposits composed of various iron oxide minerals that miner and process in order to create alumina, the primary form of raw aluminum.

Alumina (corundum) is a naturally occurring compound of aluminum and oxygen with a melting point of about 1,500degC. When present in solution as Al3+ hexaaqua cation ions can act as proton donors, gradually hydrolyzing until it forms aluminate or alumina (Al(OH)3) which precipitates out of water after hydrolysis has taken place, helping clarify water through what’s known as “alumina refining.”

Grinding alumina to an extremely fine particle size gives it multiple uses as an abrasive. It can be used to remove rust from steel surfaces, grind and polish metals, filter drinking water production for consumption purposes, flocculate wastewater treatment plants as a flocculant agent and produce chemicals such as sodium hydroxide or ethyl alcohol for manufacturing processes.

Aluminum and its alloys offer superior electrical and thermal conductivity, as well as exceptional strength-to-weight ratios and corrosion resistance, making it suitable for mold making complex shapes. Their highly reflective surface makes polished aluminum an excellent material to use when foil wrapping food and beverage cans.

Aluminum has a low density that is 2.5 times less dense than steel, which makes it an excellent material for transportation and building construction applications. Aluminum’s highly ductile nature also allows it to be formed into thin sheets for structural uses; further increasing its tensile strength by adding small amounts of magnesium or silicon.

Uses

Aluminum can be found in numerous consumer products, including cookware and beverage cans, automobiles, airplanes and construction materials. Aluminum has many desirable properties such as its ability to resist corrosion and its light weight; non-toxicity allows recycling without losing natural properties; good electrical conductivity allows forming into various shapes; it is also non-toxic allowing reuse without losing its integrity as an electrical conductor allowing it to easily be formed into shapes.

There are over 100 types of aluminium alloys on the market today, each tailored for specific uses. All begin as bauxite, mined and processed into powdery material called alumina through crushing, dousing in water and kiln-drying processes that remove impurities such as clay and silica; leaving behind powdery material known as alumina that can then be further refined through filters and processes to produce stronger metal alloys.

Aluminium’s ability to form alloys enables manufacturers to produce an array of products. Alloys also boast superior strength-to-weight ratios than pure metals, making them suitable for structures needing to support heavy loads such as aircrafts or vehicles.

Alums are among the most essential aluminum compounds, consisting of double salts with the formula MAL(SO4)2 *12H2O where M is any singly charged cation such as K+. Their name derives from Latin alumen (the mineral form), while most frequently potassium alum (KAl(SO4)2 *12H2O) can also be found among other variations that contain sodium, gallium, indium cesium or ammonium ions.

Alumina can be combined with sulfates to produce alums, which are then widely used as bleaching agents and surface finishing chemicals in paper production, while also serving to clarify drinking water by binding to cloudy ions that contribute to cloudiness.

Aluminium’s resistance to corrosion and high conductivity make it ideal for use in electrical systems, often as an economical replacement for copper in high-voltage transmission lines and transformers. Proper design and installation techniques must be adhered to for safe and reliable operations; aluminium can also be used to make sputter targets for thin film deposition on fuel cells, displays, LEDs, photovoltaic devices or photovoltaic cells.

Applications

Aluminum (or alumin) is a highly adaptable metal that can be combined with various elements to produce many useful substances. Aluminum has applications across many fields – aerospace, medicine, food packaging, ceramics, automotive construction and more! With its high strength-to-weight ratio and ease of working into complex shapes it has long been used in power cables as an insulator material.

Nature provides aluminium sulphate as an insoluble mineral known as “alumen”. Alums, double salts of MAl(SO4)2 * 12H2O with M being one of sodium, potassium, rubidium, caesium or lithium can also be found in soil and are commonly used to purify water as purifiers while cleaning fabrics and removing stains, in addition to being capable of reducing aldehydes and ketones inorganically.

Alloying aluminum with other metals makes alumin much stronger, increasing both its tensile strength and yield strength, as well as corrosion resistance. Alumin is particularly useful in cold environments because its resistance to low temperature corrosion makes it suitable for cryogenic applications.

Pure aluminum is weak but can be strengthened through various cold-working and heat-treating processes, while alloys containing copper, magnesium and silicon increase both its tensile strength and yield strength to make it more workable.

The 6000 series of aluminum alloys containing magnesium and silicon as primary alloying elements stand out for their excellent machinability and superior strength. These properties make 7000-series alloys particularly beneficial to aircraft, automobile, and construction components that will be exposed to atmospheric corrosion. Although more difficult to machine, their excellent ductility provides excellent strength-to-weight ratio. They are corrosion resistant and formable, making them the ideal material to use in engine blocks and other parts that need to dissipate heat efficiently. Also referred to as structural aluminum, these materials can be extruded into custom shapes for manufacturing and construction applications.