Borepatch, this one is for you.
In METE 2020 today, whilst talking about aluminum production (a very energy intensive process, with large amounts of CO2 produced as a byproduct--any hippie worth his hemp should weep triple amounts of sweet sweet tears over every aluminum can alongside the road, as the pollution load must be truly staggering--but I digress!), the professor said "I don't know what you all think of global warming, but you can see that there is quite a bit of carbon dioxide produced with this process..."
My eyes nearly bugged out of my head. "WHAT? YOU'RE NOT JAMMING IT DOWN MY THROAT? WHAT RACE OF ALIENS ABDUCTED ME, AND WHY DID THEY PUT ME IN A WORLD SO CLOSE TO THE ONE I LEFT?"
6 comments:
Anglesey Aluminum in the UK shut down, because it couldn't secure a long term suppy of electricity. Bunch of jobs lost in Wales.
There are many forms of hippies. Some are just smellier than others, I guess.
When you say making aluminum produces large amounts of CO2, you're talking about the CO2 that is produced by the generating plants making the electricity, not the actual processing of the aluminum, right?
Actually, the process itself generates large amounts of CO2. There are large carbon anodes and cathodes that are hooked up to the electricity you mentioned, and the reaction reacts the Al2O3 (Alumina) with the Carbon to create pure Al and CO2.
Hope that helps explain it.
Thank you, yes, that explains it, sort of. But how fast do those carbon electrodes get used up? And how about the pots? This is something they kind of gloss over in basic science.
I really don't know how fast the anodes and cathodes get used up. I do know that they do get worn out and have to be replaced, and that they can recycle them, but I think they mostly just get discarded. I found this article that may help you some more.
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