SEPARATION OF WROUGHT FRACTION OF ALUMINUM RECOVERED FROM AUTOMOBILE SHREDDER SCRAP

摘要

After more than a decade of gestation, the use of wrought (sheet and extruded) aluminum is finally becoming widespread in automobiles. While it will still be another decade before the wrought scrap from these new autos will show up in the recycle streams in a large quantity, efficient and cost-effective technologies are being developed to recycle these alloys. The composition of cast aluminum alloys is incompatible with that of their wrought cousins. Methods of separating these fractions are being developed to permit the increase in the recycled content of the wrought alloys. The purer wrought scrap can also be used to batch newer grades of cast alloys that now utilize significant quantities of prime smelter metal for dilution. As a part of the Automotive Aluminum Alliance program designed to promote the development of a recycling system for aluminum scrap from end-of-life vehicles, we report on a new wrought aluminum scrap product recovered commercially from aluminum mix separated from nonmagnetic shredder scrap. We present the hand sort composition from 100-ton-scale sorting plant tests plus spectroscopic analysis and melt recovery of 20,000-lb batches of the wrought material melted in an industrial reverberatory side-well melter.