Commercialization: aluminum to the forefront

A group of six industrialists led by Alfred E. Hunt provided the financial backing that enabled Hall to found the Pittsburgh Reduction Company in 1888. Before that year was out, Hall and his first employee, Arthur Vining Davis, had produced the first commercial aluminum.

The first name in aluminum
In 1907, the company was renamed the Aluminum Company of America (Alcoa). Business grew as manufacturers grasped the benefits of this light yet strong metal. In the mid-1930s, industrial designer Henry Dreyfuss predicted that "aluminum will play a large and significant part" in the "greatest period of redesign the world has known." By the late 1930s, a pound of aluminum cost just 20 cents; its uses numbered more than 2,000.

At the front
Aluminum was at the forefront of the development of our industrial society and also played a strategic role in World War II. Demand doubled as the material spawned a new generation of aircraft and automobiles. Aluminum products also included cooking utensils, foil, electric wire and cable.

Mining to manufacture
Today, the United States is the world’s greatest producer and consumer of aluminum—metal of the modern era. The process begins with truckloads of dirt and ends with billions of recycled items.

Mining bauxite Four tons of bauxite produce one ton of aluminum—enough to make the cans for more than 60,000 soft drinks. Bauxite is formed over millions of years by chemical weathering of rocks containing aluminum silicates, producing an ore rich in aluminum oxide. Today, bauxite is mined primarily in Africa, Australia and the Caribbean.

Refining alumina The ore is ground and mixed with lime and caustic soda, then heated in high-pressure containers. The aluminum oxide is dissolved by the caustic soda, precipitated out of the solution, washed and heated to eliminate water. The resulting alumina is a white powder resembling sugar.

Smelting into aluminum An electrolytic reduction process known as smelting dissolves the alumina in a cryolite bath inside carbon-lined cells, or pots. A powerful electric current, which is passed through the bath, separates aluminum metal from the chemical solution and the metal is siphoned off. Smelting is the industrial-scale version of the process developed in 1886 by Charles Martin Hall in his woodshed laboratory.

Fabricating products Aluminum goes from the smelting pot into the furnace for mixing with other metals. These alloys have specific properties to meet specific uses. Fluxing purifies the metal, which is then poured into molds or cast into ingots. Fabrication may include forging, casting, rolling, drawing or extruding to create different finished products from automobiles to aircraft. Recycling extends the life cycle of aluminum products, the most valuable material in the waste stream.

Reduce, reuse, recycle
The first all-aluminum beverage can appeared in 1963 and the first recycling effort began in California in 1968. In 2000, the recycling rate for aluminum cans was more than 60 percent, compared with only 15.4 percent in 1974.

Today, more than 10,000 aluminum recycling centers operate across the United States. Recycled aluminum—from packaging to approximately 90 percent of automotive aluminum scrap—makes up one-third of America’s aluminum supply. Recycling saves almost 95 percent of the energy needed to produce aluminum from its ore—conserving natural resources and reducing pollutants such as carbon dioxide, nitrous oxides and sulfur dioxide while also reducing the need for solid waste disposal.

In 1996, recycling saved the equivalent of more than 18.4 billion barrels of oil, or 10.8 billion kilowatt hours—enough energy to supply electricity to a city the size of Pittsburgh for about six years.

Charles Martin Hall would have been proud that the process he discovered, and its commercialization, would also create valuable recycled materials.