How Aluminium Is Made Animation Direct

The aluminum in the rock dissolves into the liquid, while the unwanted "red mud" (iron and silica) sinks to the bottom and is filtered out [1, 6].

Our story begins in tropical regions, where a reddish-clay rock called is mined [1, 5]. It doesn’t look like metal at all; it’s a mix of aluminum compounds, silica, and iron rust [5, 6].

From red dirt to white powder, and from a lightning-bolt bath to a silver slab, the aluminum is now ready to be shaped into anything from a foil wrap to a jet engine. How Aluminium is made animation

This is the most dramatic part of the animation. Alumina is very stable; you can’t just melt it with fire to get the metal out. You have to "shock" it [1, 6].

Massive carbon rods (anodes) are lowered into the vat, and a colossal electric current—hundreds of thousands of amperes—is surged through the liquid [1, 6]. The aluminum in the rock dissolves into the

The white powder is dissolved in a giant steel vat filled with molten cryolite (a mineral that helps it melt at a lower temperature) [1, 6].

The crushed bauxite enters a high-pressure "pressure cooker" filled with hot caustic soda [1, 6]. From red dirt to white powder, and from

The electricity rips the oxygen away from the aluminum. The oxygen bonds with the carbon rods and floats away as CO2, while the pure, heavy molten aluminum sinks to the bottom of the vat [1, 6]. Act IV: The Final Form