Peak Oil News and Message Boards

Aluminum is very electricity intensive. However, we would not need to step up aluminum production very much to start using it in the stead of copper. We don't really use that much copper. It's just that we don't have very much of it to play with.

Most of the US' supply of aluminum is produced along the Columbia Gorge. These plants are near the gorge because of the cheap surplus electricity generated by the dams on the gorge. This is energy that the utility needs to dump somehow. It's worth mentioning here that EVs would generally do the majority of their charging in a similar fashion, off peak. This is part of the reason why aluminum cans are super cheap. At any rate, the energy source that this nation's aluminum plants rely on is sustainable for as long as the dams aren't rendered useless with silt.

I am certainly not claiming that automobiles are environmentally friendly. I am only claiming that EVs are the most environmentally friendly (and the only technically viable) alternative option that we have to ICE powered automobiles.

American Dream: I do disagree with you to some extent. I do much of my shopping on the internet. I actually use my E-Bike to go grocery shopping or my Honda CRX HF (that's the 40mpg model). I usually ride 16 mi/day commuting on the E-Bike unless the weather stinks. When my electric car is done, I will use that. I am also a full time student. I take all of my notes on a tablet pc and I do most of my homework on a the tablet too. My internet classes require no paper of course. I can't remember the last time I paid a bill on paper. Obviously my class mates use lots of paper (not everyone has a snazzy tablet pc), some people still pay bills with paper (the darn utility companies still send paper to our house), and very few people use an electric bicycle today, so your point is very valid. However, I am only trying to point out that one of the perceived obstacles (copper availability) to a new transportation infrastructure is actually a non-issue.

Thank you for the respectful responses.

The problem with aluminum wiring is not that it isn't a good conductor. The problem is that it oxides easily. Copper oxide conducts electricity. Aluminum oxide doesn't. Aluminum wiring was popular in manufactured housing in the 70's. The problem was that the splices tended to oxidize leading to fires. Probably if you soldered all the splices, they'd be fine. It would just be a lot more effort to be sure that it was used safely.

Manufacturing aluminum requires massive amounts of electricity. While certain places like the Columbia Gorge have traditionally had electricity surpluses that were more or less disposable I don't know that it can be counted on into the future. Internet companies are starting to eye that electricity for their server farms. The tech industry in Eastern Washington is booming.

BigTex wrote:Isn't aluminum manufacturing an especially resource intensive process?

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.

I have heard that with the cost of power it's hard for aluminum to make a profit these days. Here's a story from 2006 that talks about the problem:

http://daily.sightline.org/daily_score/ ... not-foiled

This "congealed electricity" is another thing that was everywhere in the 20th century, but may become as rare and precious as it was back when Louis the 8th had a tea set made of aluminum, which was an incredible luxury in the 19th century.

We're building our solar-electric car now, before it all runs out:

www.sunnev.com

xrotaryguy wrote:the estimated crustal abundance of aluminum is a whopping 8,230mg/kg.

But no one just digs up a bunch of soil and rocks and makes Aluminium out of it. You need far more concentrated material to be economically viable. Bauxite deposits (where we get our aluminium from) are clays that are high in Al. Metallurgical grade bauxite from the Weipa mine in Australia is 52-54% Al2O3. Also, a lot of your whopping 8230mg/kg is tied up in silicates. Silica is a penalty element in bauxite ores i.e. not a good thing. In short, there may be a lot of Al out there - but only a small portion is amenable to processing into metal. Similar comments apply to iron as well. Steel manufacturers won't look at your ore unless it contains >55%Fe, has low Phosphorus, low Ca, low silica etc etc.

We have largely mined out the high grade deposits for many elements and are left with more and more deposits that are large tonnage/low grade i.e. they require more drilling, blasting, crushing and processing to make the metals we require. This is all well and good in a situation of abundant cheap energy, but a real problem when energy is increasingly expensive.

Many, possibly even most, mines require copious amounts of diesel to operate. Not just for trucks, but in many cases for electricity generation. Peak oil never gets discussed within the mining industry, but as far as I can see it is going to get absolutely shafted by it.

It isn't just the possible electric vehicles which will be putting a great demand on copper, but the ongoing infrastructure development in India and China. Also, the heat exchange properties of copper make it a growth metal for air condtioning condensers and evaporators. Do you think a newly middle class Chinese or Indian may just crave some air conditioning? I do.

Then, look at alternative electrical energy. Both wind and solar power suffer from intermitency, such that the installed base of wind and solar generation will require more copper than conventional electrical generation modes. If it takes three times the peak generation potential for alternative sources to net out where you need to be to supplement or replace current power generation , then you'll need three times the copper in the windings of the generators and transformers that collectively form the distribution network. Something to think about. And, wind power in particular tends to be off the beaten path, so you are looking at long spans of high voltage lines.

Smallpoxgirl: You're definitely right that aluminum tends to have oxidization problems. Back when I worked at the auto parts store, many of my customers would only buy ignition parts that were made from copper. It's not that the aluminum stuff didn't work. The copper just worked better. Heck, I have been running the same distributor cap in my Rx4 for years, and it still works fine. So yeah, copper is better... but aluminum is good enough.

As yesplease stated, energy companies dump a huge amount of energy off peak. Some of my EV driving buddies actually go down to one of the local utilities' generation facilities and charge for free at night just for grins and giggles. The guys that work at the plant are more than happy to give the energy away. It is simply being wasted at that hour.

The US has a long way to go before it seriously needs to worry about its electrical infrastructure. We currently use considerably more energy than all western European countries combined (125 vs. 80 quadrillion btus/year). That's right, 300 million Americans use 45 quadrillion more btus per year than 700 million Europeans. Experts claim that this country can actually. If we really start running into problems with production, we have a massive cushion to fall back on using more efficient energy practices.

Revi, that's an interesting article. It's amazing that the Bonneville Power Annex (BPA) is selling energy to aluminum manufacturers for as little as $12 per MWh. That's only 1.2 cents per kWh. I wish my electricity was that cheap. I'm over here choking on my price gouging 9 cents per kWh energy bill. haha. Seriously though, the fact that the aluminum NEEDS its energy to be that cheap speaks to the incredibly energy intensive nature of aluminum production. Wow!

Thylacine, I can not argue with you about the necessary quality of aluminum ore. However, given the massive disparity between the availability of aluminum and copper, it stands to reason that significantly more aluminum of acceptable concentration than there is of copper.

As for using diesel in mining... I don't have a definitive answer for that. Many machines can actually be powered directly off the grid. Actually the mining industry uses drag-link-type machines more than just about any other industry (sounds like a good solution for farm machinery too if you ask me). But running a bunch of dump trucks around with power cords following them is obviously not a good idea. Battery powered heavy machinery sounds pretty unlikely too. I think that we're fairly stuck with diesel for many of these types of machines. The diesel will need to be bio-diesel though whether or not producing a sufficient amount of bio-diesel is possible is questionable.

Again, using copper in an AC system, or for any other type of system that uses a heat exchanger is not necessary. The condenser in my household AC unit is made of aluminum. Actually, the condensers in every air conditioned house that I have ever lived in has been aluminum. I think that copper has been a little spendy for this application for qhite some time. Automotive radiators haven't been made out of copper (brass actually) for more than a decade. Copper heat exchangers really are not terribly common, and again, they aren't necessary. Aluminum works very well in nearly all heat exchange applications. Even high performance race car radiators and intercoolers are made out of aluminum.

Even so, you're right that the developing world is placing higher demand on all raw materials at a frightening rate. No two ways about that.

Thanks again for the constructive responses everyone. I think this is the longest one of my threads has ever gone without things turning nasty on this forum. Maybe things have changed since I was here last time?

smallpoxgirl wrote:The problem with aluminum wiring is not that it isn't a good conductor. The problem is that it oxides easily.

depends on the definition of a good conductor. aluminum has about 1/2 the conductivity of copper; i'd have to look it up to answer, what is the exact number, and how it compares by weight, and by volume.

what matters is how much energy you lose as heat in the distribution lines, if you're using it as distribution lines. 1/10 ohm difference can matter a lot more over a distance. for example, copper transmission lines (long distance)(unless of course they're made out of aluminum and steel) connecting to a house with aluminum wiring (short distance.)

in order to terminate (connect) aluminum, it helps to plate it, so you can solder it. if you use a pressure contact, that is more prone to corrosion & loss of signal or power, depending on what you're using it for.

there's also a fatigue issue. take any wire and bend it back and forth in the wind and it will snap. reduce the diameter of each individual strand, and they can bend a lot easier. like the flex circuit that attaches to a hard drive armature, flexes millions of times no problem.

Much as we discussed copper clad steel wiring in the theives thread there is also the option os copper electoplated aluminum wire, which solves the corrosion problem nicely while retaining the light weight of Aluminum and only a small cost penelty for the more expensive copper.

CCA Wire wiki

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.

[quote=pedalling faster]depends on the definition of a good conductor. aluminum has about 1/2 the conductivity of copper[/quote]
I think you're pretty close. The conductivity of aluminum is notably lower than copper. This is an issue in applications where the mass of the aluminum or the number of windings is critical, but in many other applications, the wire can simply be made of a larger diameter.

Element Electrical resistivity (microohm-cm)

Aluminum 2.655
Copper 1.678
Gold 2.24
Silver 1.586
Platinum 10.5

source

Huh, so in terms of resistance Al is trading ~$1.50 less than Cu.

I'm not an electrical engineer but I don't think that we're looking at it correctly in terms of mere resistance, but should look in terms of how much current a wire can carry. Resistance losses for copper versus aluminum are tiny, and even superconductors with zero resistance have current limits.

I do know that many long range high voltage wires are now aluminium.

The typical thing that limits the amount of current a given wire can carry is voltage drop. Voltage drop is determined by the diameter of the wire and its characteristic resistance. At higher frequencies, skin effect also plays a role, but not at 60hz.

Heat dissipation can also play a role in some circumstances if a bunch of wires are running through the same conduit.

I do know that many long range high voltage wires are now aluminium.

Almost all.

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.

link

At high voltage Al is preferred over Cu.

P(loss) = P²R/V²

line loss decreases with the inverse of the voltage increase squared.

ie. As voltage doubles line loss drops by 75%. The higher resistance of Al becomes less of a factor and other metal characteristics like weight,tensil strength, and cost take over.

Aluminum can be used in many places, even most of the distribution lines in aircraft are aluminum. However, in cases where dissipation is key to sizing equipment, copper rules the day. changing to aluminum may save you a significant portion of the conductor mass, but you are hit with the need for increased size of everything, which makes the damned thing heavier than with copper windings. Current ratings of wire are dependent on temperature rise, at a system level you look at voltage drop, but if your insulation goes over rated temp, your systems dies a premature death.

Hope this helps...

*Burl Ives singing* Silver and gold, silver and gold . . .
Science Daily

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. [...]

I read about this a few days ago. Its not good for us who think we are going to be saved by our Kooks, Maples, ASE, Philharmonics...yada yada yada ... Maybe i better start buying my silver in rare coins... they hold value!

So, the Andes are prospective for copper, moly, silver and gold. Who would have thought it! All that lovely metal sitting in "undiscovered porphyry copper deposits".

Seriously though, these deposits (when they're finally found!) tend to be very large, the majority of the ore is low grade and the mines are only economic if you've got access to abundant cheap energy to mine and process them.

Get Pizzaro on the horn. This is in situ leach mining, really industrial stuff.

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.