Energy intensive. It's supposedly called congealed electricity. That being said, we have a lot of energy, so much that we have evidently no problem wasting the vast majority of it, so I don't think the electricity needed for Al is a significant problem yet.BigTex wrote:Isn't aluminum manufacturing an especially resource intensive process?
Professor Membrane wrote: Not now son, I'm making ... TOAST!
xrotaryguy wrote:the estimated crustal abundance of aluminum is a whopping 8,230mg/kg.
smallpoxgirl wrote:The problem with aluminum wiring is not that it isn't a good conductor. The problem is that it oxides easily.
CCA was also used in mains cable for domestic and commercial premises. The copper/aluminium construction was adopted to avoid some of the problems with aluminium wire, yet retain some of the cost advantage. It is not used today in domestic 240v installation wiring.
Alfred Tennyson wrote:We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Professor Membrane wrote: Not now son, I'm making ... TOAST!
I do know that many long range high voltage wires are now aluminium.
In the early days of electrical transmission, copper was used extensively as a conductor, but now virtually all conductors are aluminum. Each conductor is made of many strands (1-5 mm in diameter) combined to give an overall diameter of 4-50 mm. In most conductors, steel or a high-strength aluminum alloy is used for the core strands to give the conductor added strength. In a transmission line, up to 4 conductors may be used in parallel to form a conductor bundle.
South America Holds Treasure Of Copper, Molybdenum, Gold And Silver
ScienceDaily (Sep. 9, 2008) — Deposits of undiscovered copper, molybdenum, gold and silver may be present in the Andes Mountains of South America, according to a new scientific assessment. The assessment estimates that the Andes may hold 750 million metric tons of copper in undiscovered porphyry copper deposits. Mining from these types of deposits provides more than 50 percent of world copper supply.
The undiscovered porphyry copper deposits also have the potential to contain 20 million tons of molybdenum, 13,000 tons of gold and 250,000 tons of silver. Molybdenum, known to occur naturally with copper, is used in industry to harden steel and for catalysts, lubricants, and pigments. Estimated undiscovered molybdenum resources in the Andes represent more than double the current world reserves of 8.6 million tons. The Andes were studied as part of the first global mineral resource assessment, which is being led by the U.S. Geological Survey. The USGS jointly prepared and published the Andes assessment with experts from the Geological Surveys of Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Peru. [...]
Copper porphyry ores, especially those too deeply buried for conventional open pit mining, are mined in place by an in situ leaching technique using as a leaching medium a mixture of dilute sulfuric acid, oxygen and nitrate ion added either as nitric acid or as an alkali metal or ammonium nitrate salt. The nitrate ion speeds dissolution of copper minerals, especially chalcopyrite, and the alkali metal or ammonium ion reacts with iron and sulfate in the leaching medium to deposit iron in the form of crystalline jarosites. Precipitation of iron within the ore body as a jarosite maintains the permeability of the ore body to the leaching medium thus increasing both the rate and the total recovery of copper as well as depleting the leach solution of unwanted iron.
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