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The aluminum market is a game.
https://www.cnbc.com/2014/06/03/how-aluminum-became-a-cash-c...
And according to
https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/40538538
, it always has been.
In the referenced book, the author details how the aluminum cartel was dismantled under the threat of WWII needs because of their failure to promptly address the needs of the United States.
My recollection was that the Washington Monument has an aluminum cap on account of the material's status as a precious material at the time. What I found at the below link is a story of "fake it until you make it" pushing of materials science and self-promotion worthy of an HN read.
https://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/jom/9511/binczewski-9511.h...
Yeah, until the Bayer process was discovered to pull aluminum out of bauxite in the late 1880s, it was worth more than gold. Tutankhamen had an aluminum ankh very close to his body for that reason.
And even for a long time after that, before we had a critical mass of aluminum for recycling, it was still extremely expensive because of how capital and energy intensive the Bayer process is. For that fifty or so years it held a similar niche as aluminum in practical materials science.
> Tutankhamen had an aluminum ankh
The ability to make Aluminium would be alien technology to the ancient Egyptian culture. There’s a good reason it’s production was only discovered in modern times.
My guess is that you were thinking of Tutankhamun's meteoric iron dagger
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tutankhamun%27s_meteoric_iron_...
“Nineteen iron objects were discovered in the tomb of Tutankhamun, including a set of blades which appear very similar to those used in the Egyptian opening of the mouth ceremony (a ritual performed for the benefit of the deceased to enable an afterlife). These blades are also intricately linked to iron and stars, being described in temple inventories as composed of iron and were themselves frequently referred to as the stars. The other iron objects were wrapped with Tutankhamun's mummy; these include a miniature headrest contained inside the golden death mask, an amulet attached to a golden bracelet and a dagger blade with gold haft. All were made by relatively crude methods with the exception of the dagger blade which is clearly expertly produced. This suggests that the dagger was probably imported to Egypt perhaps as a royal gift from a neighboring territory, indicating that at this time Egypt's knowledge and skills of iron production were relatively limited. Only further analytical testing can confirm if all of these artifacts are made from meteorite iron but they do appear to suggest that iron was a material used to indicate high status at the time of Tutankhamun's death in approximately 1327 BC.”.
Dang. I had this image of Tut collecting all his old gum wrappers then fusing them in a hot fire.
There was, however, ingots of aluminium among the French crown jewels for a while.
> The ability to make Aluminium would be alien technology to the ancient Egyptian culture.
The pyramids, on the other, employed perfectly logical building techniques for that age of human development.
You are better off assuming everything is.
Fascinating read. Apparently the antitrust case mentioned towards the end is still ongoing.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-aluminum-lawsuit-idUSKBN2...
_the aluminium industry consumed 6% of all global coal-fired electricity in 2019 – more coal-fired electricity than is generated in the whole of Europe – and is actually becoming more reliant on coal at a time when the world is becoming less reliant on coal._
https://ember-climate.org/commentary/2020/10/06/aluminium/
_The aluminium sector has a pivotal role to play here. Accounting for 1.1 billion tonnes of CO2 emissions per year, it generates around 2% of global human-caused emissions. Demand for aluminium, an essential material for several key industries including construction, transportation and power transmission, is expected to grow by more than 50% by 2050. As such, emissions must be addressed now._
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/11/the-aluminium-industr...
"at a time when the world is becoming less reliant on coal"
No, we aren't becoming less reliant on coal. We should be but we aren't. Look at [1]. We actually consume more coal, oil and gas each and every year.
[1]
https://ourworldindata.org/energy-mix
Depends by who you mean by 'we'.
If you mean America, then coal consumption is down by nearly 50% since 2000[1]. If you mean the EU, then you'll be pleased to know we've also reduced our coal consumption substantially.
The principle increase in coal use is China. They've almost 4x their use of coal in the last 20 years. They also are leading the world in construction of new coal consuming power plants -- both in China and elsewhere[2].
[1]
https://www.iea.org/reports/coal-2020/demand
[2]
https://www.wired.com/story/china-is-still-building-an-insan...
> Depends by who you mean by 'we'.
Climate change is a global problem, so the only 'we' that really matters is the whole planet.
The western world decarbonizing after spending well over a century spewing carbon to build out their modern infrastructure is nothing to be deeply proud about, nor sufficient to give the moral high ground to start pointing fingers at the developing world that still wants to get closer to western lifestyles.
We’re just outsourcing our pollution.
Great point.
Similarly, we didn't _actually_ abolish slavery. We in the west are still benefiting from literal chattel slavery. It's just not happening in our backyard, so we don't have to see it, even if we're still benefiting from it.
Around 14% of China's CO2 emissions can be attributed to exports. If you count the other 86% you're basically saying China is a western colony which it clearly isn't.
If you wish to get pedantic about it, we push our manufacturing desire to places in the world that leverage the lack of employee rights, ecological controls, and resource utilization because it's cheaper.
It's not JUST that we've moved (okay, some percentage) of pollution over there, it's that we've decided to turn a blind eye to ANYTHING you couldn't get away with in America (think overtime, OSHA controls, EPA restrictions, intellectual property theft, money movement)...that does not absolve China from taking care of it's own ecology, which it 'appears' to be doing at a faster rate than us...because they don't have the shackles a pesky democracy or rights or any of those other things that go counter to their desire to control absolutely everything within and without its borders.
https://www.chinaghostcities.com/
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2021-10-17/China-steps-up-expandi...
https://chinaenv.colgate.edu/airpollution/air-pollution-in-c...
I used to think it'd be a wave that followed cheap labor...I hope it doesn't as I don't think the planet has enough runway to support it.
And where do most Chinese exports go to?
Yes, but that is mainly due to the US & EU using more gas.
And "reliant" - most of it goes to goods and services that are just nice to have.
> The principle increase in coal use is China.
because it builds products for US and EU?
Good link, but to be fair it looks like it's leveled off since 2011. Oil & gas are continuing to grow, as are solar & wind.
Relative numbers can be misleading and saying coal consumption has decreased is actually false. We’re not doing Mother Earth any favors by sustaining very high consumption but the average reader would believe it’s a green trend.
I didn't say decreased, I said leveled off. Mouse over and compare 2011 with 2019.
Of course we need to cut coal usage as far as possible, if not completely.
I know but the parent comment and original post said something like “less reliant on coal” which is a relative interpretation and your “leveling off” comment illustrates my point about how relative figures get misconstrued because you can’t exactly become less reliant on something when your consumption remains the same.
In Europe the alternative for coal in heavy industry is natural gas and we all know how that's working out right now.
Why don’t they just like Bitcoin with electricity and use the waste heat in the electrolyte melting process?
Using electricity to heat anything is wasteful when it could be used to waste clock cycles on cryptocurrency instead, first.
Because they're not using it for heat, they're using it for electrolysis.
Only as a side note/curiosity, possibly one of the most valued sets of cutlery Napoleon III owned was an aluminium one:
https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/51115/did-napole...
Anyway until the late second half of the 1800's, it was considered as valuable as gold, if not more (article in French):
https://journals.openedition.org/archeosciences/560
Until exceptionally abundant electricity and the Hall-Heroult process, a french guy whose name I forgot discovered you could burn bauxite under a vacuum with elemental sodium. Which meant it was like a twenty step process that burned off other really expensive difficult materials to make.
Wild stuff.
In the same vein, the Washington Monument is topped with an aluminum pyramid. This material was selected because at the time of construction aluminum was still considered nifty and new.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Monument#Aluminum_a...
If people are upset by so called "dumping" - can't they just let China charge more than they would have for this aluminum?
Aluminum has well known fixed costs in smelters, it's one of those products they use as an example where it may make economic sense to keep a smelter going (even if incurring losses / ) because the cost of shutdown.
Ie, a potline may take up to a week just to "turn off" and a huge amount of effort - think a month of full time work + weeks of troubleshooting as annode effect issues, alumina concentration and other bits settle down. Don't you basically have to recondition (fully, replace all anodes, dig out the crust) the pots, and even then you may be taking a bit hit on pot life with the cool down / reheat cycle?
I know the US has "anti dumping" rules regarding sugar as well - which I've been told contributes to a fair bit of corn syrup use.
I'm not that hung-up on the US blocking imports of cheap materials (if that's what the US wants to do), but how does the US get some third party country to grab this quantity of metal? Ie, China could sell to other countries that are not as concerned about dumping. For example, why would a poor country without a local smelter even care about "dumping" - it would seem the cheap prices would be a subsidy in effect.
Now I wonder how this is related...
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3784270/Chinese-bil...
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/a-chinese-billionaire-...
Seems very possible that there was a similar approach here in Vietnam where a goal might have been to get the stuff to the US.
I'm a bit confused by the seizure. Ie, if US doesn't want the cheap aluminum -> let another country have it cheap?
That said, Biden does seem to be going big on tariffs.
"The decision is one of Mr. Biden’s first significant moves on trade and suggests that his administration may be inclined to maintain the type of hefty tariffs Mr. Trump imposed on foreign metals to protect domestic industry. That position found favor with unions, but disappointed industries and businesses that have argued the tariffs raise costs." - NY Times - Biden Reinstates Aluminum Tariffs in One of His First Trade Moves
So this story does seem to be continuing with efforts by Biden to keep imported prices higher and there may be an element of politics in some of this all.
_> So this story does seem to be continuing with efforts by Biden to keep imported prices higher and there may be an element of politics in some of this all._
At this point it's likely a national security issue for the US and EU, given the dependence on aluminum for aviation and the history of the aluminum cartels up to WWII. Many of their smelters already depend on practically free or negative-price electricity and a flood of aluminum into the market could semi-permanently crush those producers.
> Ie, China could sell to other countries that are not as concerned about dumping. ... For example, why would a poor country without a local smelter even care about "dumping" - it would seem the cheap prices would be a subsidy in effect.
Because you can either be part of the group of powerful nations that rules the planet (including through various global and regional trade arrangements, international organizations, military power, sanctions, banking/finance and so on), or you can be on the outs with them and they may choose to brutalize you at some point in that case.
The US, as one example, has a lot of levers. If you decide to try to operate outside of its preferences, it can trivially wreck you if you're a small nation. China for its part increasingly swings a big influence hammer, which is why so many nations are very afraid to even offend them. If you're a stray midling country out there, you generally don't get to just do whatever you want to, even if you're not signed on to various limiting agreements around eg dumping. The more powerful nations have specific interests, a specific way they think the world should be, and they have no qualms about being randomly hypocritical (at your expense).
Even most larger nations have to be quite careful. The West is growing quite tired of Erdogan for example and they will further crash Turkey's economy (further amplify the damage Erdogan is already doing) if they think it'll help get rid of him. Turkey can rather easily be smashed at this juncture, potentially resulting in civil war, rolling instability for years or decades, quasi Syriaification.
Why would the aluminum stock not be useful after 10 years, oxidation?
Aluminum "scrap" is still very useful and valuable.
It might be in specific forms ready to be processed - eg. blocks of specific dimensions or weights.
After 10 years outside, it's probably covered in dust and grime, and gotten an oxide layer. It probably isn't _immediately_ sellable to a car factory...
But it could be reprocessed very inexpensively and become sellable. The loss of value would probably be well under 1%.
People saying "it's so old, it's basically scrap" either don't know what they're talking about, or they're deliberately deceiving - and being market traders, I suspect the latter in the hopes of pushing market prices higher.
> and gotten an oxide layer
Aluminium has an oxide layer the second it comes into contact with air.
It keeps increasing (exponentially slower, thus with a finite total depth) even without any other chemical.
Anyway, out on the world there are many chemicals that can make it deeper, can peel it from the metal so another layer forms, or can mix with it and make it less insulating. I would be surprised if loses are as low as 1% as people point on this thread, but shouldn't be very large either.
Oxidation is technically a fire, albeit very slow
Fire is a type (fast) of oxidation. That doesn’t mean that oxidation is a type of fire.
really? citation?
"Fire is the rapid oxidation of a material"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire
You might want to include the end of that sentence: "...in the exothermic chemical process of combustion, releasing heat, light, and various reaction products."
This confirms the, imo, common-sense position that _no_, oxidation is not just a slow fire. A fire is a specific type of oxidation process that involves the production of significant light and heat. In other words, it is only true that oxidation is a slow fire if one adopts a definition of fire that is significantly different from its ordinary usage.
A fire releases the "heat, light and various reaction products" that it does _because_ of the speed of oxidation. It's obvious even from the snippet I posted that slow oxidation is not _actually_ a fire.
Yes, but aluminum oxidizes rapidly yet this oxidation process does not produce significant heat and light. So in this context, the independent heat/light requirement makes a difference!
Mill aluminium under inert gas into a powder and then release the pure unoxidized powder into the air.
My money is on some fireworks occurring.
Oxidation of aluminum does produce heat and light (the reaction is exothermic). It’s just a _very_ small and fast fire.
It does as a powder.
thank you
Fire is a phenomena whereby a fuel is combined with an oxidizer to make a new product in a manner that releases heat (ie: an exothermic redox reaction).
Rusting of metals fits that bill since heat is in fact released (just a super tiny amount and rather slowly), so it's _technically fire_ - although fire more commonly implies the rapid release of copious amounts of energy as part of the process.
thanks
Acids can make that much thicker. Acids that exist in the environment in small amounts...
Like sulfur / sulfuric acid from all the coal we're burning.
I have a 1983 Honda and the aluminum shines like a mirror. It didn’t always. When I got it the metal looked dull and weather possible damaged. It is amazing what buffing it can do. From garbage to mirror finish. Very satisfying to watch aluminum being polished. The aluminum did loses some of the outer layer that had oxidizes but looks brand new once cleaned up. Looks new and has the structural integrity to be used in aircraft is not the same but for the purposes of a motorcycle cover it is just fine. There are many other applications for aluminum that structural integrity is not if concern like heat sinks. The LED light I am building uses aluminum extrusion as heat sink.
Old Airstream trailers (1950s-1990s at least) can be buffed to a mirror-like finish.
Oddly, new Airstreams seem to come pre-oxidized. Not sure if this is a design choice, or if they don't use aluminum any more.
It's for manufacturability, not design... Airstreams are now a premium brand, and it's quite expensive to develop and maintain a mirror polish. Someone buying a $150k polished trailer expects it to be completely unblemished.
You can still polish it yourself, it only takes about 80 hours of manual labor...
That makes sense. Like a popcorn ceiling.
Also any road damage or wear will be much more visible on a polished surface, which is not a premium look.
I thought earlier-era Airstreams were buffed and clearcoated before initial sale. My only evidence is vintage photos, and the fact that some owners "restore" the mirror finish.
Mirror finished anything on the road seems like a really bad hazard.
There are no flat or concave surfaces, so any reflections are diffused out. Ends up not being an issue at all.
Well you will see big rigs with the polished tanks on the road already. They are typically cylindrical and even the back end is bubbled out so you do get some shine it’s not like a direct beam of light hitting your eyes.
Aluminum is very oxidation resistant once the initial thin oxide layer forms. I doubt that is the issue.
I would guess the reason is similar and would be weathering/erosion due to being outside and pelted with sand/rain/etc.
Yeah I was going to say, repeated rain (which is slightly acidic) and the like will keep pelting it. I mean the lifetime can probably be extended if they store it inside a building, but that's a lot of building space.
So the 'Buying spree' graph is apparently showing a surge of import. But it really doesn't show anything like that. Or am I just misunderstanding something?
The chart legend says it represents the total value of exports to Vietnam from its trading partners, equivalent to Vietnam's imports.
In 2015 and 2016 Vietnam's imports of aluminum were much larger than previous years and later years. The excess value over $4B (the level of subsequent years' imports) totals over $6B. I took 2015-16 to represent the surge of imports.
The price of Al seems to have been around 80 cents a pound at the end of 2016,
http://m.kitco.com/getChartPage?symbol=al&width=438&height=2...
(then select 5 years). At $1,600 a ton, that's nearly 4 million tons.
This more than covers the 1.8 million tons in the GVA stockpile.
What form is the aluminum in these stockpiles? Bars? Giant cubes? Boullion? I have no idea how unprocessed aluminum is kept around.
Likely to be either billets or sheet ingots.
Billets:
https://www.google.co.nz/search?q=%22aluminium+billets%22&tb...
An example of dimensions: “Most of the produced billets by the South Aluminum Industries Complex are produced in the form of cylinders with a diameter of 280 (11 inches) and a length of 7,500 mm” and some details of their manufacturing process here:
https://en.salcocompany.com/aluminum-billet/
Billets of various diameters are used in aluminium extrusion machines:
https://www.aec.org/page/aluminum-extrusion-process-basics
Ingots are rolled to produce sheet, which I think is the majority usage by weight of Al:
https://www.metalex.co.uk/expert-aluminium-plate-suppliers-e...
“The rolling process kicks off with massive, pre-heated metal sheet ingots weighing as much as 20 tons. The ingots tend to be around six feet wide, twenty feet long and over two feet thick.”
Beer and soda cans, duh. Just dig in a random landfill and you'll find the stockpiles right there.
Vietnam does consume a large amount of 333 and Larue
This is the material supply equivalent of a crypto coin that has 50% of its market cap in one wallet.
The industry around the world is running out of aluminium. Aluminium mills are closing all around the globe, except for China.
Why? No magnesium. And China don't let out its magnesium.
China produces most of the world magnesium supply. Production is down due to electrical power shortages and they have restricted exports in order to ensure supply for domestic needs.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-10-27/magnesium-shortage-in...
Hmm. Magnesium is anything but scarce -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnesium#Occurrence
OTOH, it's not used in huge quantities (vs. oil, coal, iron, etc.) - so it seem plausible that China could kinda corner the market. At a reasonable cost (for them). Especially if they're the ~only country bothering to run a strategy...
They already have the market cornered. They produce over 90% of the global supply.
Energy is scarce though. Only Chinese smelters have dolomite based production, which is much cheaper than bruteforce electrolysis.
I sense something else going on here. The mineral dolomite is hardly scarce, and the Pigeon Process (to produce magnesium from dolomite) was invented in Canada in the 1940's.
High quality magnesite, magnesia, and dolomites are scarce, but central China is one big slab of them.
There's an ongoing theme with certain non-rare industrial materials like Aluminum/Aluminium, magnesium, and not-so-rare "rare" earths elements.
The materials are abundant in nature, however it's the ability or willingness to process those materials in country which is rare. For example, rare earths are dirty to process so developed countries have outsourced their pollution to China.
What’s the connection between the two metals?
"Aluminum" is sold and used as an alloy, not as pure elemental Al. 6061 grade aluminum for instance has ~1% magnesium.
Almost all structural aluminium in use is duraluminium. You need magnesium for duraluminium alloys.
Is aluminum running out? Why is there a deficit? The article doesn't explain that.
The article even has a graph that shows that stockpiles are very high. The doom seems to come entirely from projections due to China reducing production. The article doesn't explain why other countries cannot step up production to meet demand.
The article's quality is poor. It wasn't worth my time to read.