Aluminium - Enriching A Billion Lives

We're back with the second post on the history of the wonder metal - Aluminium. Thanks for coming back. Let's roll forward on our journey and check out the important milestones that shaped our history.   Read our first post in this series here . 1886: The electrolytic process of extracting aluminium used today in some smelters was invented by two scientists –   Charles Martin Hall  and Paul Louis-Toussaint Héroult . The former was a French scientist and the later, an American chemist. The duo invented and even patented this process at the same time while working independently. The scientific world gave recognition to both by calling this the Hall-Héroult Process of aluminium extraction. We’d totally watch a movie made on this! The Hall - Héroult duo 1888: Charles Hall and his partners founded a smelter in Kensington, Pennsylvania, which extracted aluminium using the process invented by Hall himself. Initially, the company churned out 22....

Hello everyone! Aluminium is called the 'Metal of the Future' for a reason. From pins to planes, the metal has thousands of applications benefitting humankind. Its lightweight and non-corrosive property make it the material of choice for cutting-edge automobiles, modern buildings, satellites etc. and is eventually substituting iron and steel today.  In this series, we bring to you the journey that our civilisation has travelled using aluminium along the way - a story which must start from the very beginning. Here we go! Did you know that aluminium is the most common metal found in earth’s crust? Almost 8% which, considering the earth’s size, is pretty staggering. However, given the difficulty in extracting aluminium and the subsequent costs associated with it, for decades aluminium was prized above gold. So much so that the first president of 1948 French Second Republic, proudly served his most honoured guests using aluminium plates & cutlery. Whoa! From the...

Aluminium is used excessively in the modern world with extremely diverse due to its several unusual combinations of attributes. No other metallic element can be used in so many ways across such a variety of domains like in the home, in transport, on land, sea and in air, and in industry and commerce. Aluminium's usages are not always as obvious as they may seem, with sizeable proportions of manufactured aluminium and aluminium oxide going into other separate processes, like the manufacture of glass, rather than towards the common consumer products that we most readily associate Aluminium with.  Over 95% of the Alumina manufactured globally is derived from Bauxite by the Bayer process. The Bauxite residue primarily consists of iron oxides, silicon oxide, titanium oxide and undissolved alumina together with a wide range of other oxides. This depends on the place of extracted bauxite and during refinery process, it leaves behind a residue known as Red Mud. It is composed of a ...

On 30 th August this year, Mr. Anil Agarwal, the Chairman of Vedanta Resources Plc. visited the Hon’ble Chief Minister of Odisha Shri Naveen Patnaik at the State Secretariat in Bhubaneswar. After the brief meeting, the CM announced that the Government had decided to set up a medical college in Kalahandi to provide accessible healthcare facilities to the people. It would be a Government medical college and the infrastructure would be provided by the Vedanta group. The Chairman promised to partake in the development initiatives benefitting the people who really needed it in and around the region. He said that there is much necessity of the medical college being set up and he would mobilize an amount of Rs 100 crores for building the infrastructure required for the college which will be managed and run by the Government. Kalahandi and the surrounding districts are affected by poverty and malnutrition. Not much has changed for the people who still clamor for basic healthcare ameniti...

Alumina production employs the Bayer’s process which leaves behind a residue known as Red Mud. If the alumina extraction is done through any other process then the residue left behind is known as White Mud or Bellite. Over 95% of the alumina manufactured globally is derived from bauxite by the Bayer process. For more on the Bayer’s Process:  http://redmud.org/red-mud/production/ Red mud near Stade (Germany) Over 90% of the alumina produced in the world is used to manufacture aluminium metal. This is termed as metallurgical or smelter grade alumina (SGA). The rest is termed non-metallurgical grade alumina (NMGA). Red mud is composed of a mixture of metallic  oxides. The bauxite filtrate primarily consists of iron oxides, silicon oxide, titanium oxide and un-dissolved alumina together with a wide range of other oxides. This depends upon the place of extracted bauxite. The iron oxides, which comprise up to 60% of the mass of the sludge impart the red colour. ...

What’s up? What had you been up to this week? I’d been to the national level seminar on ‘ Aluminium – The Strategic Metal ’ this Thursday. It was organised by the Aluminium Association of India (AAI) and presided over by the Union Mines Secretary - Mr. Balwinder Kumar and others. It was quite interesting to know about developments in the aluminum industry. Plus the venue was Hotel Mayfair. Who could miss that? Now tell me what happened there? In the welcome address by Dr. TK Chand, the president of AAI and CMD of NALCO, he began by pointing out that Aluminium metal is always associated with 3 important words – ‘Strategic, Green & Future’. The metal has numerous applications and that Odisha has more than half of the country’s bauxite reserves. However, all is not well at the moment. Sluggish market conditions, vagaries of the commodity cycle, cheap imports from China & the Middle East has hit the Indian Aluminum Industry quite badly. Even though ...

We all know that cheap imports from China is hurting the domestic aluminium manufacturers the most. But how exactly? And how can this be countered to ensure that the Indian market does not suffer? Let us break it down for you in a simple manner.  Before we begin, let us know about the Safeguard Duty. To safeguard the financial interests of any injured industry in India, the government can introduce a temporary duty (superior to import duty) if it sees a sudden surge in imported goods. This is called Safeguard Duty and is independent of Free Trade Agreements with any country. A  20% duty on imported steel has already been imposed in favour of the steel industry and thus offered relief to the all the domestic steel manufacturers.But this has not been revised for the Aluminium sector in a long time. OK! Show me the numbers! Currently, there is no Safeguard duty for the domestic industry. Cheap exports by China is wreaking havoc on the national aluminium manuf...

The 3 rd most abundant element in the earth’s crust is Aluminium, just after oxygen and silicon. The production of Aluminium starts with its primary raw material – Bauxite ore which is the world’s primary source of the metal. Not surprisingly, Aluminium is the second most use metal in the world after iron & steel. From household utensils to space satellites, there are thousands of applications of the metal. The bauxite ore occurs mostly in the tropics. It is usually deposited in horizontal layers with either a little or no overburden.   These layers are usually found mixed with other clay minerals, iron oxides, and titanium dioxide. The ore itself is covered in a red jacket of mud and rock imparted to it by the oxides of iron present in the soil. For recovery, washing the ore is a must before it is passed for processing. Thus, it is first transported to crushing and washing plants before being sent for alumina extraction. The sludge is usually deposited in tailing ...