A $5B hoard of aluminum
mining.com
mining.com
https://www.cnbc.com/2014/06/03/how-aluminum-became-a-cash-c...
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.
https://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/jom/9511/binczewski-9511.h...
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.
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.”.
The pyramids, on the other, employed perfectly logical building techniques for that age of human development.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-aluminum-lawsuit-idUSKBN2...
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...
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
because it builds products for US and EU?
Of course we need to cut coal usage as far as possible, if not completely.
Using electricity to heat anything is wasteful when it could be used to waste clock cycles on cryptocurrency instead, first.
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):
Wild stuff.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Monument#Aluminum_a...
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.
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.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3784270/Chinese-bil...
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/a-chinese-billionaire-...
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.
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.
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.
Aluminium has an oxide layer the second it comes into contact with air.
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.
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.
My money is on some fireworks occurring.
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.
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.
You can still polish it yourself, it only takes about 80 hours of manual labor...
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.
I would guess the reason is similar and would be weathering/erosion due to being outside and pelted with sand/rain/etc.
Why? No magnesium. And China don't let out its magnesium.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-10-27/magnesium-shortage-in...
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...
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.
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.
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.”
The article's quality is poor. It wasn't worth my time to read.