My son reported one of his teachers (high school) told his class the earth will run out of “aluminum” within the next 20 years. (It should be noted this particular teacher is an Eco-freaking fanatic).
I expressed extreme skepticism, knowing that aluminum is the second most abundant metal on the planet… yet I’m reserving judgment until I can gather my facts, which I’m having a hard time doing. It seems there are studies that show bauxite production is not going to keep pace with demand, and blah blah blah.
I suspect this is one of those “manufactured” stories devoid of real science, foisted on an unsuspecting public by an evil cabal of anti-aluminum-smelting ecomaniacs seeking to scare our children into recycling more. I’m very pro-recycling and always have been, and I know smelting gobbles huge amounts of electricity (resulting in the inevitable burning of fossil fuels in generation thereof), but is there an end in sight to our global sources of new Al?
No, we are not running out of aluminum. That’s ludicrous. We are running out of the energy to make aluminum though. Your eco-freak teacher needs to actually learn what causes he’s fighting for. Aluminum is all about energy conservation.
I know nothing of the geology behind Al production, but a lot of smelters are sited near hydroelectric plants for the sole reason that they can provide huge amounts of dirt-cheap electricity. In fact a number of hydro schemes were built solely to power smelters.
Obviously since there is are fairly substantial emissions invovled in constructing hydro plants there is a bit of a chicken-egg issue, but the operation of a smelter does not invariably consume lots of fossil fuels.
A bit of a tangent, but I thought I read somewhere that aluminum was one of the best recyclables in terms of not having loss. In other words, you have nearly the same amount of aluminum after recycling as you did when it was scrap. I realize that there’s loss from the energy applied to melt it down, but doesn’t the high recycleablity rate (if that’s a term) mean that we’ll have aluminum for a very long time?
According to “Mineral Resources, Economics and the Environment” (Stephen E. Kestler), a textbook, your son’s teacher is just about as wrong as it’s possible to be. On page 322 there’s a diagram with the ratio of known reserves vs. annual production. There are four categories, 10-25 years supply at current known reserves, 25-50 years, 50-100 years, and 100+ years. About 40 elements and minerals are named. Aluminum is not even mentioned.
Elsewhere in the book it says that since 1980 aluminum capacity has significantly exceeded demand.
Finally, although aluminum is among the most expensive metals to produce in terms of power cost, it’s only about five times as expensive as steel, copper, silicon. There are a couple metals with far greater power costs.
Very true; known copper reserves offer about fifty more years before they run out. Of course, we can still recycle copper, which is readily separated and reclaimed, so it is hardly an environmental or economic crisis, especially since one of the largest uses of copper–a medium for telecommunications–will eventually be completely replaced by optical fiber made of abundant silica, chalcogenide, or plastic.
CaptPitt is correct that aluminum is also readily reclaimed and is in fact easier and less intensive to recycle than to produce from bauxite ore; this is also preferable because bauxite is generally surface mined, and thus mining disrupts ecosystems and processing results in open tailings. There are sufficient known bauxite deposits to provide aluminum for the foreseeable future. The worst environmental impact from aluminum production (assuming that tailings from bauxite processing or aluminum recovery are properly contained and processed) is the unrecoverable use of fresh water resources, but the same is true for any other metal production, and industry in general.
Current operations get rid of the oxygen in the aluminium oxide by electrolysis, and the electrodes are carbon, which combines with the free oxygen to produce a whole lot of CO[sub]2[/sub]. You could use a different material for the electrodes, but that’ll be another change adding cost to the production.
I’m not so sure that’s true. Not the optical fiber part; that’s certainly well on its way. I mean the part about telecomm using up most of the copper. I work in the power distribution industry and I gotta tell you just ONE of our 300 kVA transformers has enough copper to make a few miles of phone cable, easily. So, I’m going to have to say we (and by “we” I mean the electrical power industry as whole, not just my little company) eat Ma Bell in terms of copper usage. Of course, hard numbers trump my impression, so if you got 'em, throw 'em down on the table.
But nobody’s ever run into the sky-is-falling running out of aluminum story anywhere, huh? I wonder where that clown got it and where he got the balls to offer it to high school students?
I’ve tried to teach my boy to be skeptical of everything, but it appears he bought it hook line and sinker, coming from his teacher. Gotta watch those academics, they often have their own agendas, too.
Finally a question I can answer in this interesting thread. I am an active Green. I give to Green Peace and many others. I am a board member of a small environmental group. I practicully drown in Green related stuff.
I have never heard this sky-is-falling story before.
