Are you thinking of aluminum recycling, which is much easier than aluminum smelting, which is not an incredibly efficient process? I think recycling aluminum requires 5% of the energy that smelting it requires.
Recycling Aluminum cans is actually much easier and better for the environment. If I recall correctly, it takes about 5% of the energy to make aluminum from recycled sources vs. from ore.
The fact that you can take cans into a recycler and get paid for them is a _really_ good indicator that recycling aluminum works.
I can't speak to other materials but aluminum recycling is incredibly less energy intensive than refining from ore. It takes an incredible amount of energy to convert aluminum oxide into aluminum and not much to melt aluminum once it's in that state.
Isn't aluminum particularly profitable to recycle, even with a low recovery, since it requires absurd amounts of power to smelt the stuff in the first place?
Aluminum is incredibly abundant in the earth's crust, but from what I understand it is the poster-boy for recycling because of the extreme difference in power costs between melting it down, and making it in the first place.
Aluminum and steel actually make quite a bit of sense to recycle. The big energy cost is in the processing of ore to metal. Re-melting the metal is relatively low energy.
Aluminum is the real winner for recycling. It is far more economic and energy efficient to recycle existing aluminum than it is to make new stuff from ores.
Aluminium recycling is actually has lots of ecological benefit. It uses about 95% less energy to recycle aluminium than it does to produce it. In terms of subsidies to recycling you've chosen the item that would always be recycled no matter what.
Recycling aluminum is more energy efficient than making new aluminum. At this scale, I can imagine recycling this metal into new bicycles could be more efficient than fixing and distributing old bicycles.
It takes less energy to melt the can than to smelt the bauxite ore and create an electrolyte with lots of electricity. That's why we recycle aluminum cans.
> Recycling aluminum saves 90% to 95% of the energy needed to make aluminum from bauxite ore. It doesn't matter if you're making aluminum cans, roof gutters or cookware, it is simply much more energy-efficient to recycle existing aluminum to create the aluminum needed for new products than it is to make aluminum from virgin natural resources.
> So how much energy are we talking about here? Recycling one pound of aluminum (33 cans) saves about 7 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity. With the energy it takes to make just one new aluminum can from bauxite ore, you can make 20 recycled aluminum cans.
> Putting the energy question into even more down-to-earth terms, the energy saved by recycling one aluminum can is enough to power a television set for three hours.
Aluminum is extremely recyclable and energy efficient at doing it. Estimates put it at 75% of all aluminum that has ever been created is still in circulation having been recycled because it is so easy to do it.
> Recycling aluminium uses about 5% of the energy required to create aluminium from bauxite; the amount of energy required to convert aluminium oxide into aluminium can be vividly seen when the process is reversed during the combustion of thermite or ammonium perchlorate composite propellant.
> Aluminium die extrusion is a specific way of getting reusable material from aluminium scraps but does not require a large energy output of a melting process. In 2003, half of the products manufactured with aluminium were sourced from recycled aluminium material.
That wouldn't be the case if it was intensive to recycle.
Recycling metal isn’t a scam, especially aluminum where a surprisingly high percentage of the amount of aluminum ever produced is still in use and it can be recycled to a pristine state with much less energy than producing from ore.
It is a similar story for aluminum. It takes much less energy to re-use recycled aluminum than to manufacture new. [0, about 2/3 of the way down the page].
Also the aluminum association is a trade organization so they are obviously promoting the use of aluminum. But still some of the facts are quite interesting.
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