When is aluminum found

The Natural History by Pliny the Elder, a Roman scientist, told the story of a first century craftsman presenting a cup made of an unknown metal looking like silver, but too light to be sliver, to Tiberius, the Roman Emperor.

Alum, an aluminium-based salt, was used extensively in ancient times. Commander Archelaus discovered that wood was practically flame resistant if it was treated using an alum solution; protecting his wooden fortifications against flamed attack. Alum was used throughout Europe from the XVI century onwards: in the leather industry as a tanning agent, in the paper-pulp industry for paper sizing and in medicine, i.

Aluminium was named after alum, which is called 'alumen' in Latin. This name was given by Humphry Davy, an English chemist, who, in , discovered that aluminium could be produced by electrolytic reduction from alumina aluminium oxide , but did not manage to prove the theory in practice.

Hans Christian Oersted. Hans Christian Oersted from Denmark was successful in ; however he apparently produced an aluminium alloy with the elements used in the experiments, rather than pure aluminium. Hans Christian's work was continued by Friedrich Woehler, a German chemist, who set about working from 30 grams of aluminium powder in October 22, It took another 18 years of continuous experimentation for Friedrich to create small balls of solidified molten aluminium globules in Discovery of aluminium ore.

In Geologist Pierre Berthier discovered reddish clay rock deposits in France. The rock was named bauxite after Les Baux, the area where it was found. Henri-Etienne Sainte-Claire Deville, an outstanding French chemist and technologist, transferred the chemical method of aluminium creation discovered by scientists to industrial application.

He improved the Woehler process and produced the first industrial aluminium together with his partners at Charles and Alexandre Tissier's production facility in Rouen France in The produced metal resembled silver, it was light and expensive, hence at that time aluminium was considered an elite material intended for ornaments and luxury items. The first aluminium products are considered to be medals made during Napoleon III's reign.

Napoleon supported the development of aluminium production and Friedrich Woehler designed a rattle for Crown Prince Louis Napoleon made of aluminium and gold. However, even then Sainte-Claire Deville understood that the future of aluminium was not just to be associated with jewellery:.

Luxury items and ornaments cannot be the only sphere of its application. I hope the time will come when aluminium will serve to satisfy the daily needs. Aluminium's development changed with the discovery of a more cost-efficient electrolytic production method in The method involved the reduction of molten aluminium oxide in cryolite. The process demonstrated excellent results, but required an enormous amount of electric power. Charles Hall. Later it was renamed to the Aluminium Smelter Society and its logo depicted the sun rising from beyond an aluminium ingot.

Rathenau's idea was that it should symbolise the dawn of the aluminium industry. Following the Aluminium Smelter Society's creation aluminium production efficiency increased more than 10 times in five years. Just 40 tonnes of aluminium were melted in in Neuhausen compared with tonnes in Charles Hall, with the support of his friends, established the Pittsburgh Reduction Company which launched its first smelter in Kensington outside Pittsburgh on September18, It produced only kg of aluminium per day in the first few months, but quickly accelerated to kg daily by Smelters are historically built in the vicinity of powerful, cheap and environmentally friendly energy sources, such as hydroelectric power stations, even today.

Karl Joseph Bayer, an Austrian chemist, invented a cheap and feasible alumina aluminium oxide production method in when working in St. Petersburg Russia at the Tentelevsky production facility.

Going forward, Alumina became the basic raw material for aluminium production. By the mids battery technology had improved in output and reliability to the point that the first electrolytic production of aluminum was possible.

A man of wide-ranging interests, Bunsen ultimately became famous for developing the spectroscope and for the use of iron-oxide hydrate as an antidote to arsenic poisoning. Curiously, he did not invent the burner that carries his name; that was the work of his assistant Peter Desaga, who improved on a design by Michael Faraday.

In Bunsen improved on an battery design by William Robert Grove, who a few years later also produced the first hydrogen-oxygen fuel cell. With these batteries he started experimenting with electrolysis, producing pure chromium, magnesium, manganese, sodium, barium, calcium, and lithium, in addition to very small amounts of what he believed to be aluminum in But he then moved on to other areas of interest, publishing his important paper on emission spectroscopy in Through this process he was able to obtain enough aluminum to produce marble-sized blobs.

In he patented a method for making the extraction of alumina Al 2 O 3 from mineral bauxite more cost-effective.

These efforts introduced aluminum to the world by lowering its price to a level that allowed ordinary people to afford aluminum jewelry. Aluminum largely remained a curiosity for the next 20 years, in part because the metal produced by the Deville process was notoriously difficult to work with.

With low demand there was little economic reason to build aluminum plants. Production worldwide in was only about 2 metric tons. Fifteen years later, when a 6-pound aluminum cap was famously placed on the Washington Monument, world production had increased to only 3. The bulk of the remainder came from France, Germany, and England. A big hurdle to achieving lower-cost aluminum production was the lack of a good power source. Even if someone developed an advantageous electrochemical reaction, it needed to be sufficiently strong, sustainable, and economical.

The growth of reliable, commercial electric dynamos in the last third of the 19th century meant that reliable electrical power would be available wherever mechanical energy existed, and it returned attention to the possibilities of an economical electrolytic process for aluminum.

Today, nearly all of the world's aluminum is obtained by isolation from aluminum oxide derived from bauxite ore. Appearance: Silvery white, lightweight metal. Behavior: Soft, nonmagnetic, and nonsparking.

Pure aluminum is easily formed, machined, and cast, and it can be alloyed with a variety of metals. It is also a good conductor of electricity and an excellent reflector of radiation. The metal is generally nontoxic but can be harmful when ingested. Uses: Used to make cans, kegs, wrapping foil, and household utensils. It has numerous applications in the vehicle, aircraft, and construction industries. The intriguing international tale of the discovery of the economical production of aluminum independently by two young men, the American Charles M.

Hall and the Frenchman Paul L. My fascination with aluminum, however, has less to do with the actual element and more with the relationship between Frank Fanning Jewett and Hall. Jewett, educated at Yale University in chemistry and mineralogy, had a passion for travel.

Using these Al fingerprints, the scientists estimated that a supernova occurs every 50 years, on average, in the Milky Way galaxy, and that every year, seven new stars are born.

Perhaps aluminum's most famous appearance on the recent research scene was in , when it played a role in the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. The winner of the prize, materials scientist Dan Shechtman of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, discovered quasicrystals , molecular structures of non-repeating patterns.

The material in which Shechtman discovered these quasicrystals was a mixture of manganese and aluminum. There are hundreds of aluminum alloys, or mixes with other metals, on the market, according to Yuntian Zhu, a professor of materials and engineering science at North Carolina State University. Aluminum alone is light but weak, so other metals are added to give it more muscle.

Zhu and his colleagues took this concept to an extreme, creating aluminum as strong as steel, they reported in a paper published in the journal Nature Communications in By subjecting aluminum mixed with a little magnesium and zinc to extreme pressure, the researchers found that they could mash the grains of aluminum down to nano-size.

These smaller grains allow the alloy to move, so that it doesn't become brittle and snap like ceramic under pressure. But the movement is grudging enough that the material remains very strong. Currently, the researchers can only make small amounts of this super-strength aluminum alloy at a time, meaning commercial applications aren't yet possible.