COMO se HACE el PAPEL de ALUMINIO en las FÁBRICAS | Como se FABRICA una HOJA de PAPEL de ALUMINIO

Aluminum is one of the most versatile metals in the world. It bends like paper and resists like steel. It is used to preserve and cook food. But, how is aluminum paper made? In this video we will discover how millions of tons of mineral are processed to produce rolls of aluminum paper. Aluminum paper was invented by the American company Reynolds Metals in 1947 and was originally used to wrap chocolate bars. Since then, aluminum paper has become a widely used material in the kitchen due to its durability, water resistance and thermal insulation capacity. The shiny face of aluminum paper helps to reflect the distant infrared rays, which keeps the food hot. The process for obtaining aluminum was so complicated and expensive that it made aluminum more valuable than gold until the beginning of the 20th century. The first step to make aluminum paper is to obtain the raw material, in this case pure aluminum. Pure aluminum is extracted from bauxite, a mineral that is found in large quantities in the earth's crust. Bauxite is extracted mainly in tropical countries and arrives by boat to the aluminum refinery. From this red earth called bauxite, a white powder called aluminum oxide is extracted. It is later used to make aluminum paper or cans of drinks. Aluminum is the third most common element of the earth's crust. Bauxite is the only mineral from which aluminum can be extracted in a profitable way. This is the largest bauxite mine in the world. The Alcoa mine is located in the middle of the Australian mountain range. Around 23 million tons are extracted per year here. But most of it cannot be extracted without first crossing an underground rock barrier more than 5 meters deep. The excavator shovel moves 7,000 tons of bauxite a day. The bauxite of the jungle has more than 50% aluminum oxide. The water demand of a bauxite mine is gigantic. The water is carried to huge washing machines, where the clay and other parts of the bauxite that contain little aluminum are eliminated. Now the trick is to separate the aluminum and oxygen from the rest of the components of the bauxite, which implies grinding the mineral until it becomes powder. The finely ground bauxite mineral is transported to the aluminum refineries for later processing. The aluminum atom of the bauxite is linked to oxygen molecules. These links must be broken with electrolysis to produce pure aluminum. Then, through a chemical transformation called the Bayer process, the aluminum is extracted, which will later be calcined to eliminate all moisture. The pulverized mineral is transported to facilities such as the Alcoa refinery. There, the transformation occurs. To extract the aluminum oxide from the bauxite, caustic soda is needed. It is a relatively old process, more than 100 years old, the so-called Bayer process. The bauxite is introduced into a pressure solution along with caustic soda. The bauxite powder is mixed with the caustic fluid, which separates the aluminum oxide from the mud, resulting in a concentrated aluminum oxide solution. And here comes the amazing part. The solution dries and turns into a white powder called aluminum. This white powder is the starting material for countless applications, but above all it is used for the production of metallic aluminum. The loader fills the boats with up to 70,000 tons of aluminum. The aluminum it transports will be transformed by a melter into 35,000 tons of pure aluminum. But to obtain pure aluminum, it is necessary to break the oxygen atoms that contain it so strongly. The way to do it is by using large amounts of electricity. The white powder passes through a conveyor belt directly to the melt. Here the white powder finally turns into pure aluminum. This factory has 432 nozzles, within which a powerful electric current is applied to produce electrolysis. The powder is introduced into the ovens. There it dissolves in a bath at 950 degrees Celsius. The melting temperature of aluminum is 660 degrees Celsius. A strong current circulates inside the ovens. This causes the aluminum particles to dissolve from the white powder. The force of the electrons destroys the bonds that bind aluminum to oxygen. The oxygen rises to the top of the nozzle, while the ground aluminum, which is denser, sinks. Aluminum production consumes 10 times more energy than steel. And this energy accumulates in the metal. Liquid aluminum is enormously reactive. Contact with water is especially feared, as it releases as much energy as a dynamite explosion. With each stage of transformation, the value of the raw material multiplies by 5. A third of the cost of a kilo of aluminum corresponds to electricity. Although manufacturing aluminum requires a lot of energy, once the aluminum oxide is released from the oxygen atoms, the metallic aluminum is very stable. This means that it can be melted and reused over and over again forever. To meet the demand, this operation is carried out 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and produces more than 154,000 tons of aluminum per year. Now we have to take the aluminum out of one of the nozzles. Each produces approximately 1.5 tons of aluminum per day. The nozzles filled with molten aluminum are transported to the molding area. The molten aluminum is poured into molds to form ingots, which are solid rectangular aluminum blocks. The molds are cooled with water to accelerate the solidification of the molten aluminum. The ingots are unmolded and are ready for milling. Each ingot is huge, measuring 4.5 meters long and 1.5 meters wide. It weighs the 8-ton friolera, so it must be manipulated with cranes and placed on special platforms. This impurity removal machine removes 3 millimeters of the thickness of the ingots. The impurities are removed to achieve a perfectly smooth finish. All the remains of the liquid used to cool the blades must be removed. These aluminum ingots are sent to the factories that produce aluminum foil. The manufacture of aluminum foil requires the repeated thinning of a large block of aluminum. The second step in the manufacture of aluminum foil is lamination. In this process, the aluminum ingots are heated to a suitable temperature and passed through a series of rollers that crush and stretch them, reducing their thickness and increasing their length. The heat is so high that the ingot is at risk of sticking to the mill roller. To avoid this, everything is cooled with a liquid that has 95% water and 5% oil. Starting from a thickness of 45 centimeters, the ingot becomes thinner with each pass. The ingot passes through the machine between 12 and 16 times. This lamination process is carried out in several stages, each of which uses rollers of different sizes and shapes to produce thinner and more uniform aluminum sheets. The ingot has become a sheet of half a centimeter thick. It is thin enough to pass to the milling machine, where it is rolled on itself before being sent to the milling machine in the cold. There its thickness will be reduced even more. During the production of the paper, the layers of aluminum come into contact with rollers of different textures and this creates different finishes on both sides of the paper. The aluminum sheet is a thickness of a few millimeters and is at risk of breaking due to the necessary tension for the cold lamination. To prevent the sheet from sticking to the rollers, a coolant is used. This process is carried out in the cold to prevent the sheet from heating up too much and damaging it. The last step is the recutting. In this process, the aluminum sheets are heated at a high temperature for a certain period of time to reduce their hardness and improve their malleability, allowing them to be bent and molded more easily. Aluminum sheets are cut into standard-sized sheets and rolled into rolls of different sizes. Once the aluminum paper has been processed, it is ready to be sent and used in the kitchen to wrap food. If you want to know how aluminum cans are made, you have the link in the description and in the first comment. Like the video if you liked it and share it with someone else who might be interested. Also, subscribe to this channel by activating the notifications to keep learning. Greetings