Why is bauxite purified close to where it is found? Why is it taken elsewhere to be turned into aluminium?
February 26, 2010 - 1:27 am
Bauxite is the ore if aluminium (it’s main chemical).
Bauxite is mined in many places if the world. It is extracted by open cast mining. It is purified close to where it is mined and then transported around the world to a place where aluminium is extracted.
This is due to two reasons. Firstly bauxite has large amounts of unwanted material in it which makes it very costly to transport in an unpurified state due to the additional weight. Secondly the extraction of aluminium from the ore requires very large quantities of electrical power which is not available at the mining sites and so the ore has to be taken to the power not the power to the ore site which would be far too costly to do.
February 26th, 2010 at 7:17 am
This is due to two reasons. Firstly bauxite has large amounts of unwanted material in it which makes it very costly to transport in an unpurified state due to the additional weight. Secondly the extraction of aluminium from the ore requires very large quantities of electrical power which is not available at the mining sites and so the ore has to be taken to the power not the power to the ore site which would be far too costly to do.
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February 26th, 2010 at 8:01 am
I live in New Zealand where we have an aluminium smelter but no bauxite…we have to get it from Australia (where its mined)….So thats one answer.
Also you would probalby want your product to be somewhere near civilisation when its finished to cut down on costs/get labour for the work and get hooked up to the national grid (the aluminium smelter takes about 10% or TOTAL electricity used in NZ to run it!!)
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February 26th, 2010 at 8:15 am
Aluminium is sometimes called "solid electricity". It requires a great deal of electricity to smelt it from alumina. Refining alumina from bauxite can be done anywhere but smelting aluminium from alumina can only be done where electricity is cheap. The alumina has to be transported in bulk to the smelters even if they are half a world away.
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