Metalpedia
Metalpedia
  • Aluminum: discovery and industry development
  • Compared with other metals，aluminum was discovered relatively late. In 1808, Humphry Davy identified the existence of a metal base of alum, which he at first named alumium and later aluminum. In 1825, Danish physicist and chemist Hans Christian Ørsted attempted to extract the aluminum. But it took until 1827 before mixing anhydrous aluminum chloride with potassium yielded pure aluminum as a simple substance.
  • Because aluminum production was limited, the status of aluminum was very high at that time. It is said that at a dinner-party, only the French emperor Napoleon used an aluminum knife and fork, while others used silver cutlery. Exhibited at the 1855 Paris International Exposition, a small piece of aluminum, with the label: "silver from clay", was put beside the most precious jewelry. In 1889, the Russian tsar gave Mendeleev an aluminum cup, in recognition of the contribution that he had made to the periodic table of chemical elements.
  • However, in 1886, Charles Martin Hall from Ohio in the U.S. and Paul Héroult from France independently electrolyzed a mixture of molten bauxite and cryolite to yield metal aluminum, which laid the foundations for later mass production of aluminum. Since then, the status of aluminum has thoroughly transformed, which mainly reflects two changes: first, aluminum was produced on a large scale and was no longer treated as a precious metal; second, due to its widespread applications in industry and daily life, coupled with its mass production, it gradually replaced steel, copper and other metals in wider fields of application.
  • With the development of aluminum industry, the global demand for aluminum increased rapidly, the growth is at 7%, and the detail information in 2013 is as follows:
  • Source: The State of The Global Economy In Two Huge Slides-Matthew Boesler
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