How do you get aluminum from the ground?
Aluminum metal is too reactive chemically to occur as pure
aluminum in nature. Instead, it is found combined in over 270
different minerals. The main ore from which aluminum is extracted
is bauxite. Bauxite is usually strip mined because it is almost
always found near the surface of the terrain, with little or no
overburden. Approximately 95% of the world's bauxite production is
processed first into alumina, and then into aluminium by
electrolysis.
Bauxite is converted to alumina by first heating it in a
pressure vessel along with a sodium hydroxide solution at a
temperature of 150 to 200 °C. At these temperatures, the aluminum
in the bauxite is dissolved as an aluminate (the Bayer process).
After separation from the residual mud (from which most of the
aluminum has already been extracted) by filtering, pure gibbsite is
precipitated when the liquid is cooled, and then seeded with
fine-grained aluminium hydroxide. The gibbsite is usually converted
into alumina (aluminum oxide, Al2O3), by heating.
The alumina is then mixed with cryolite (Na3AlF6, sodium
hexafluoroaluminate) and heated to about 1000 °C. The cryolite
helps the alumina form a liquid solution. The aluminum is then
separated by passing a lot of electricity through it
(electrolysis). This separation is called the Hall--Héroult process
after the men who developed it. Before the Hall--Héroult process
was invented, producing aluminum was much more time consuming and
expensive - to the point that aluminum dishes and utensils were
considered more exotic and a mark of greater wealth than gold or
silver dishes and utensils. Napoleon III, Emperor of France, is
reputed to have given a banquet where the most honoured guests were
given aluminum utensils, while the others made do with gold.