[rowante]

[Aaron]

[Ebyss]

[Doly]

[gnm]

Wow that is enlightening. I thought the US produced a fair amount of its own Al however... Anyone know? The phosphate mining part is an eye opener. I hadn't thought of that. Makes me glad I don't drink soda though!

When I was young I used to collect used glass soda bottles from construction sites - you could make a fair amount (for a kid) on the return money...

-G

[MonteQuest]

Now perhaps one can understand what I mean when I say there is no techno-fix for peak oil. This is entropy at it's max. Think of all the energy transformations that occur in this process--and all the resultant unusable energy.

[SidneyTawl]

As A kid, well depends on your idea of when kid ends hehe.

Back in the early 70's, upon being broke I spent half an afternoon walking along roadsides picking up bottles. Wan't long before I had a trunkfull and on my way to see one of the best concerts I have ever seen.


(However Led Zep in 1969 is still the highlight).

The goal.

Enough money to pay for my ticket to see "The Who". Which I did earn enough. However concerts then very rarely would cost more than twenty bucks for the best seats.

I also used to be a "bottle racker" for returns at a large grocery store.

Your job was to take all the returns from people and put them into the wood case holders that held 24 bottles. Back then you had lots of different bottlers., So you had to know all the brands of each bottler and could only put them in the case.

Being fast was a pre-req, like able to put 4 bottles in at a time.

As I recall the energy to clean and sterilize the new bottles and the shipping etc. is what made aluminum more cost effective.

Wonder how that would figure today, would the bottles still be more energy intensive.

[j_bumble]

[gnm]

Well bottles are a lot heavier which perhaps plays a part in the whole issue of being less cost effective than aluminum. Shipping the bottles to whatever central area to be sterilized etc. I wonder how well it works out when you have a high rate of recycling for the Al? I understand it takes a lot of electricity to produce Aluminum, does it take a lot to recycle it?

-G

[MonteQuest]

[bobaloo]

Did you know that the Washington Monument is capped with a small pyramid made of aluminum? At the time, it was the most precious metal in existence, far more valuable than gold.

Bauxite, or aluminum ore, is basically kaolin, which is what porcelain is made from. In order to separate the aluminum it must be heated to around 4000 degrees in giant electric arc furnaces, normally powered by hydroelectric dams.

The good news is that once created, aluminum only has to be heated to a fairly low temperature to recycle it. I have several thousand pounds of aluminum in my shop, was thinking about selling it, but perhaps it will go up substantially in price one of these days...

[Andy]

[BlisteredWhippet]

[RealJoe]

[metalcaster]

[bobaloo]

[dark-suzie]

[oowolf]

[AdamB]