History of aluminium
Early history
The history of aluminium has been shaped by usage of alum. First written record of alums, made by Greek historian Herodotus, dates back to the 5th century BCE.[1] The ancients are known to have used alum as dyeing mordants and as astringents for dressing wounds; in addition to that, alum was used in medicine, as a fire-resistant coating for wood, and in chemical milling. The aluminium metal was unknown to them. Roman historian Pliny the Elder recorded a story about a metal that was bright as silver but much lighter was presented to the Emperor Tiberius, who had the discoverer killed in order to ensure the metal will not diminish the value of his gold and silver assets.[a] It is possible that this metal was aluminium;[2][3] however, this claim has been disputed.[4] It is possible that the Chinese were able to produce aluminium-containing alloys during the reign of the first Jin dinasty.[5]
After the Crusades, alum was a subject of international commerce;[6] it was indispensable in European fabric industry.[7] Alum was imported to Europe from the eastern Mediterranean until the mid-15th century, when the Ottomans tremendously raised the export taxes. Some alum mines were worked in Catholic Europe, but they could only provide little alum. Thus, when Giovanni da Castro, godson of the Pope Pius II, discovered in 1460 a rich source of alum at Tolfa near Rome, he reported excitedly to his godfather, "today I bring you victory over the Turk".[b]
Establishing nature of alum
The nature of alum remained unknown. Around 1530, Swiss physician Paracelsus identified alum as separate from vitriole (sulfates), suggesting it was a salt of an earth of alum.[9] In 1595, German doctor and chemist Andreas Libavius demonstrated that alum and green and blue vitriole were formed by the same acid but different earths;[10] for the undiscovered earth that formed alum, he proposed the name "alumina".[9] In 1702, German chemist Georg Ernst Stahl clearly stated his belief that the unknown base of alum was of the nature of lime or chalk; this mistake was shared by many scientists for another half a century.[11] In 1722, German chemist Friedrich Hoffmann announced his belief that alum was a distinct earth.[11] In 1728, French chemist Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire suggested that alum was formed by an unknown earth and the sulfuric acid;[11] however, he mistakenly believed that burning of that earth yielded silica.[12] In 1739, French chemist Jean Gello proved the equivalence between the earth in clay and the earth resulting from reaction of alkali on alum.[13] In 1746, German chemist Johann Heinrich Pott showed that the precipitate obtained when an alkali is poured into a solution of alum is quite different from lime and chalk.[14]
In 1754, German chemist Andreas Sigismund Marggraf synthesized the earth of alum by boiling clay in sulfuric acid and subsequently adding potash.[11] He realized that the earth of alum results from adding soda, potash, or alkali to a solution of alum. He described the earth as alkaline for he discovered it can dissolve in acids when dried. Marggraf also described salts of the earth of alum: the chloride, the nitrate, and the acetate.[13] In 1758, French chemist Pierre Macquer wrote that alumina[c] resembled a metallic earth.[15] In 1767, Swedish chemist Torbern Bergman published an article describing crystallization of alum from a solution obtained from boiling alunite in sulfuric acid followed by addition of potash. He also synthesized alum as a reaction product between sulfates of aluminium and potassium, thereby demonstrating that alum was a double salt.[9] In 1776, German pharmaceutical chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele demonstrated that both alum and silica originate from clay and that alum does not contain silicon.[16] Geoffroy's mistake was only corrected by German chemist and pharmacist Johann Christian Wiegleb who determined in 1785 that contrary to contemporary belief, the earth of alum could not be synthesized from slilca and alkalies.[17]
In 1782, French chemist Antoine Lavoisier wrote he considered highly probable that alumina was an oxide of a metal which had an affinity for oxygen so strong no known reducing agents could overcome it.[18] In 1783, Lavoisier replaced the dominant phlogiston theory with the idea of oxygen combustion and stated that metallic earths were oxides of their metals.[19] Swedish chemist Jöns Jacob Berzelius suggested in 1815[20] the formula AlO3 for alumina.[21] The correct formula, Al2O3, was established by the German chemist Eilhard Mitscherlich in 1821; this helped Berzelius determine the correct atomic weight of the metal, 27.[21]
Synthesis of metal
In 1760, French chemist Theodor Baron de Henouville declared he believed the earth of alum was a metallic earth and first attempted to reduce it to its metal, at which he was unsuccessful. His means to attempt the reduction were not reported but he claimed he had tried every method of reduction known at the time. It is probable that he mixed alum with carbon or some organic substance, with salt or soda for flux, and heated as highly as possible in a charcoal fire.[15]
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/32/Friedrich_W%C3%B6hler_Litho.jpg/170px-Friedrich_W%C3%B6hler_Litho.jpg)
In 1790, Austrian chemists Anton Leopold Ruprecht and Matteo Tondi repeated Baron's experiments, significantly increasing the temperatures; they found small metallic particles, which they believed to be the sought-after metal, but later experiments by other chemists showed these were only iron phosphide from impurities in charcoal and bone ash. German chemist Martin Heinrich Klaproth commented in an aftermath, "if there exists an earth which has been put in conditions where its metallic nature should be disclosed, if it had such, an earth exposed to experiments suitable for reducing it, tested in the hottest fires by all sorts of methods, on a large as well as on a small scale, that earth is certainly alumina, yet no one has yet perceived its metallization."[22] Later, both Lavoisier[when?] and American chemist Robert Hare in 1802 melted alumina but still found no metal.[22]
In 1807, British chemist Humphry Davy attempted to electrolyze alumina with alkaline batteries; in fact, he did electrolyze it, but the metal formed contained alkali metals potassium and sodium and Davy had no means to separate the desired metal from these two. Then[when?] Davy tried to heat alumina with potassium metal; some potassium oxide indeed was formed, but Davy was unable to find the sought-after metal. In 1809, Davy set up a different experiment on electrolysis of alumina; he did experimentally establish that alumina was subject to decomposition in the electric arc, but he was unable to separate the metal from iron, with which it alloyed. Then[when?] Davy made a different electrolysis experiment still, seeking to collect the metal on iron, but he was again unable to separate the two.[22]
In 1813, American chemist Benjamin Silliman repeated Hare's experiment and while he did at one moment obtain small granules of the sought-after metal, it almost immediately burned.[22]
Production of the metal was first claimed in 1824 by Danish physicist and chemist Hans Christian Ørsted. He reacted anhydrous aluminium chloride with potassium amalgam, yielding a lump of metal looking similar to tin.[23][24] He presented his results and demonstrated a sample of the new metal in 1825. In 1826, he wrote that "aluminium has a metallic luster and somewhat grayish color and breaks down water very slowly"; this hints that he had obtained an aluminium–potassium alloy rather than pure aluminium.[25] Ørsted was mostly engaged with electromagnetism and gave little importance to his discovery;[26] a different source suggests he could not because of financial reasons.[5]
Berzelius attempted isolation of the metal in 1825; he carefully washed in a crucible the potassium analog of the base salt in cryolite; he had correctly identified the formula of this salt prior to the experiment as K3AlF6. He found no metal; however, his experiment came very close to succeeding and was successfully reproduced many times later. Berzelius's mistake was in using an excess of potassium, which made the solution too alkaline and thus dissolved all newly formed aluminium.[27]
German chemist Friedrich Wöhler visited Ørsted in 1827. Ørsted told Wöhler he did not intend to continue his research on aluminium extraction. Wöhler was engaged with the problem and investigated it on his return from Denmark. After repeating Ørsted's experiments, Wöhler did not identify any aluminium.[26] (The reason for this inconsistency was only discovered in 1921.)[28] He conducted a similar experiment in 1827 by mixing anhydrous aluminium chloride with potassium and produced a powder of aluminium.[24] In 1845, he was able to produce small pieces of the metal and described some physical properties of this metal. Wöhler's description of properties of aluminium also indicates that he obtained impure aluminium.[28]
Rare metal
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/26/NATIONAL_MUSEUM%2C_NEW._AIRVIEW._AT_REAR.jpg/170px-NATIONAL_MUSEUM%2C_NEW._AIRVIEW._AT_REAR.jpg)
As Wöhler's method could not yield great quantities of aluminium, the metal remained rare; its cost exceeded that of gold.[26]
French chemist Henri Etienne Sainte-Claire Deville announced an industrial method of aluminium production in 1854 at the Paris Academy of Sciences.[30] Aluminium trichloride could be reduced by sodium, which was more convenient and less expensive than potassium, which Wöhler had used.[31] Subsequently, bars of aluminium were exhibited for the first time to the general public at the Exposition Universelle of 1855.[32] The metal was presented there as "the silver from clay", and this name was soon widely used.[33] Napoleon III of France subsidied Deville's research, which cost in total about 20 annual outcomes of an ordinary family.[34] Prior to the exposition, Napoleon is reputed to have held a banquet where the most honored guests were given aluminium utensils, while the others made do with gold.[26] In 1856, Deville, the Moran brothers, and the Rousseau brothers established the world's first industrial production of aluminium at the Tissier brothers' smelter in Rouen.[30] From 1855 to 1859, the price of aluminium dropped by an order of magnitude, from US$500 to $40 per pound.[35] Even then, aluminium was still not of great purity and produced aluminium differed in properties by sample.[34]
Deville's smelter moved in 1856–1857 to La Glacière, Nanterre, and finally to Salindres. The smelter was soon acquired by the French company Pechiney and the Compagnie d’Alais et de la Camargue, which later became world's largest in chemical aluminium production. The technology at the factory continued to improve, and the output in Salindres in 1872 exceeded that in Nanterre in 1857 by 900 times.[33] The factory in Salindres used bauxite as the primary aluminium ore;[36] some chemists, including Deville, sought to employ cryolite, but none surpassed the existing techniques.[37]
At the next fair in Paris in 1867, the visitors were presented aluminium wire and foil; by the time of the next fair in 1878, aluminium had become a symbol of the future.[38]
Electrolytic production
Aluminium was first synthesized electrolytically in 1854 by Deville and German chemist Robert Wilhelm Bunsen. Their electrolysis methods did not become the basis for industrial production of aluminium because electrical supplies were inefficient at the moment; this would only change with the invention of the dynamo by Belgian engineer Zénobe-Théophile Gramme in 1870 and the three-phase current by Russian engineer Mikhail Dolivo-Dobrovolsky in 1889.[39]
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/29/W9_Aluminiumwerk_I_Chemiepark.jpg/170px-W9_Aluminiumwerk_I_Chemiepark.jpg)
The first industrial large-scale production method was independently developed by French engineer Paul Héroult and American engineer Charles Martin Hall; it is now known as the Hall–Héroult process. Héroult long could not find enough interest in his invention as demand for aluminium was still small; the factory in Salindres did not wish to improve the process they employed. Heroult then started industrial production of aluminium bronze in Neuhausen am Rheinfall in 1888. This production was only active for a year; but during that time, the National Electrometallurgical Society was founded in Paris. The society purchased Héroult's patents and appointed him to the position of director of a smelter in Isère, which would produce on a large scale aluminium bronze at the initiation and pure aluminium in a few months. At the same time, Hall invented the same process and successfully tested it; he then sought to employ it for a large-scale production; for that, however, the existing smelter would have to radically change their production methods, which they were not willing to do in part because a mass production aluminium would then immediately drop the price of the metal. He started the Pittsburgh Reduction Company in 1888 where he initiated mass production of aluminium. In the coming years, this technology was improved on and new factories were constructed.[40] The Hall–Héroult process converts alumina into the metal; Austrian chemist Carl Joseph Bayer discovered a way of purifying bauxite to yield alumina in 1889, now known as the Bayer process. Modern production of the aluminium metal is based around the Bayer and Hall–Héroult processes. The Hall–Héroult process was further improved in 1920 by a team led by Swedish chemist Carl Wilhelm Söderberg; this improvement greatly increased the world output of aluminium.[41]
Mass usage
Give me 30,000 tonnes of aluminium, and I will win the war.
Soviet leader Joseph Stalin in writing to U.S. president Franklin Roosevelt in 1941[42]
Prices of aluminium did drop and aluminium had become widely used in jewelry, everyday items, eyeglass frames, and optical instruments, to name just a few, by the early 1890s. Aluminium tableware began to be produced in the late 19th century and gradually supplanted copper and cast iron tableware in the first decades of the 20th century. Aluminium foil was also popularized at that time. Aluminium is soft and light; it was soon discovered, however, that alloying it with other metals could increase its hardness while preserving the low density. Aluminium's ability to form alloys with other metals provided the metal many uses in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. For instance, aluminium bronze is applied to make flexible bands, sheets, and wire and is widely employed in the shipbuilding and aviation industries.[43] During the World War I, major governments demanded large shipments of aluminium for light strong airframes. They often subsidized factories and the necessary electrical supply systems.[44] Aviation during that time employed a new aluminium alloy, duralumin, invented in 1903 by German materials scientist Alfred Wilm.[45]
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/96/Aluminium_-_world_production_trend.svg/170px-Aluminium_-_world_production_trend.svg.png)
By the mid-20th century, aluminium had become a part of everyday lives, also becoming an essential component of houseware.[46] During the mid-20th century, aluminium emerged as a civil engineering material, with buildings using for both basic construction and interior,[47] and advanced its use in military engineering, for both airplanes and land armor vehicle engines.[42] In the beginning of the second half of that century, the space race began. Earth's first artificial satellite, launched in 1957, consisted of two separate aluminium semi-spheres joined together and all subsequent space vehicles have been made of aluminium.[41] The aluminium can was invented in 1956 and employed as a storage for drinks in 1958.[48]
Throughout the 20th century, the production of aluminium rose rapidly: while the world production of aluminium in 1900 was 6,800 metric tons, the annual production first exceeded 100,000 metric tons in 1916; 1,000,000 tons in 1941; 10,000,000 tons in 1971.[49] In the 1970s, the increased demand for aluminium made it an exchange commodity; it entered the London Metal Exchange, the oldest industrial metal exchange in the world, in 1978.[41] The output continued to grow: the annual production of aluminium exceeded 50,000,000 metric tons in 2013.[49]
The price for aluminium declined from $721 per metric ton in 1900 to $331 in 1942.[49] Extraction and processing costs were lowered over technological progress and the scale of the economies. However, the the need to exploit lower-grade poorer quality deposits and the use of fast increasing input costs (above all, energy) increased the net cost of aluminium.[50] Prices began to grow in 1948.[49] Aluminium became a dollar-based commodity and its price fluctuated along with the exchange rates of the currency.[51] In 2000, a metric ton of aluminium cost $1640; in 2015, it cost $1940.[49]
Notes
- ^ "One day a goldsmith in Rome was allowed to show the Emperor Tiberius a dinner plate of a new metal. The plate was very light, and almost as bright as silver. The goldsmith told the Emperor that he had made the metal from plain clay. He also assured the Emperor that only he, himself, and the Gods knew how to produce this metal from clay. The Emperor became very interested, and as a financial expert he was also a little concerned. The Emperor felt immediately, however, that all his treasures of gold and silver would decline in value if people started to produce this bright metal of clay. Therefore, instead of giving the goldsmith the regard expected, he ordered him to be beheaded."[2]
- ^ "Today, I bring you the victory over the Turk. Every year they wring from the Christians more than three hundred thousand ducats for the alum with which we dye wool. For this is not found among the Latins except a very small quantity. [...] But I have found seven mountains so rich in this material material that they could supply seven worlds. If you will give orders to engage workmen, build furnaces, and smelt the ore, you will provide all Europe with alum and the Turk will lose all his profits. Instead they will accrue to you..."[8]
- ^ The terms "earth of alum" and "alumina" refer to the same substance. The difference in the text between the two is only justified by how the authors referred to it: the mentioned German-speaking authors used "earth of alum" (Alaun-Erde) while the French authors used alumina.
References
- ^ Drozdov 2007, p. 12.
- ^ a b Eskin, Dmitry (2008). Physical metallurgy of direct chill casting of aluminum alloys. CRC Press. p. 1. ISBN 978-1-4200-6282-3.
- ^ Drozdov 2007, p. 2.
- ^ Eggert, Gerhard (1995). "Ancient aluminum? Flexible glass? Looking for the real heart of a legend". Skeptical Inquirer. 19: 37–40. Retrieved 28 October 2017.
- ^ a b Butler, Anthony R.; Glidewell, Christopher; Pritchard, Sharee E. (1986-01-01). "Aluminium Objects from a Jin Dynasty Tomb – Can They Be Authentic?". Interdisciplinary Science Reviews. 11 (1): 88–94. doi:10.1179/isr.1986.11.1.88. ISSN 0308-0188.
- ^ Drozdov 2007, p. 16.
- ^ Clapham, John Harold; Power, Eileen Edna (1941). The Cambridge Economic History of Europe: From the Decline of the Roman Empire. CUP Archive. p. 207. ISBN 978-0-521-08710-0.
- ^ Setton, Kenneth Meyer (1976). The Papacy and the Levant, 1204-1571: The fifteenth century. American Philosophical Society. p. 239. ISBN 978-0-87169-127-9.
- ^ a b c Drozdov 2007, p. 25.
- ^ Weeks, Mary Elvira (1968). Discovery of the elements. Vol. 1 (7 ed.). Journal of chemical education. p. 187.
- ^ a b c d Richards 1896, p. 2.
- ^ Drozdov 2007, p. 26.
- ^ a b Drozdov 2007, p. 27.
- ^ Pott, Johann Heinrich (1746). Chymische Untersuchungen, welche fürnehmlich von der Lithogeognosia oder Erkäntniß und Bearbeitung der gemeinen einfacheren Steine und Erden ingleichen von Feuer und Licht handeln [Chemical investigations which primarily concern lithogeognosia or knowledge and processing of common simple rocks and earths [i.e., ores] as well as fire and light] (in German). Vol. 1. Voss, Christian Friedrich. p. 32.
- ^ a b Richards 1896, p. 3.
- ^ Lennartson, Anders (2017). The Chemical Works of Carl Wilhelm Scheele. Springer International Publishing. p. 32. ISBN 978-3-319-58181-1.
- ^ Wiegleb, Johann Christian (1790). Geschichte des wachsthums und der erfindungen in der chemie, in der neuern zeit. Nicolai, Christoph Friedrich. p. 357.
- ^ Richards 1896, pp. 3–4.
- ^ Best, Nicholas W. (2015). "Lavoisier's "Reflections on phlogiston" I: against phlogiston theory". Foundations of Chemistry. 17 (2): 137–151. doi:10.1007/s10698-015-9220-5. ISSN 1386-4238.
- ^ Wurtz, Adolphe (1865). "An introduction to chemical philosophies, according to modern theories". Chemical News. 15. Manufacturing chemists: 99.
- ^ a b Drozdov 2007, p. 31.
- ^ a b c d Richards 1896, p. 4.
- ^ Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters (1827). Det Kongelige Danske Videnskabernes Selskabs philosophiske og historiske afhandlinger [The philosophical and historical dissertations of the Royal Danish Science Society] (in Danish). Popp. pp. XXV–XXVI.
- ^ a b Wöhler, Friedrich (1827). "Ueber das Aluminium". Annalen der Physik und Chemie. 2. 11: 146–161.[permanent dead link]
- ^ Drozdov 2007, p. 36.
- ^ a b c d Venetski, S. (1969). ""Silver" from clay". Metallurgist. 13 (7): 451–453. doi:10.1007/BF00741130.
- ^ Richards 1896, pp. 4–5.
- ^ a b Drozdov 2007, p. 38.
- ^ George J. Binczewski (1995). "The Point of a Monument: A History of the Aluminum Cap of the Washington Monument". JOM. 47 (11): 20–25. doi:10.1007/bf03221302.
- ^ a b Drozdov 2007, p. 39.
- ^ Sainte-Claire Deville, H. E. (1859). De l'aluminium, ses propriétés, sa fabrication. Paris: Mallet-Bachelier. Archived from the original on 30 April 2016.
{{cite book}}
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suggested) (help) - ^ Karmarsch, C. (1864). "Fernerer Beitrag zur Geschichte des Aluminiums". Polytechnisches Journal. 171 (1): 49.
- ^ a b Drozdov 2007, p. 41.
- ^ a b Drozdov 2007, p. 46.
- ^ Polmear, Ian (11 November 2005). Light Alloys: From Traditional Alloys to Nanocrystals. Butterworth-Heinemann. p. 15. ISBN 978-0-08-049610-8.
- ^ Drozdov 2007, p. 42.
- ^ Drozdov 2007, pp. 43–45.
- ^ Drozdov 2007, p. 47.
- ^ Drozdov 2007, pp. 52–53.
- ^ Drozdov 2007, pp. 55–61.
- ^ a b c "Aluminium history". All about aluminium. Retrieved 7 November 2017.
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(help) - ^ a b Drozdov 2007, p. 85.
- ^ Drozdov 2007, pp. 64–69.
- ^ Ingulstad, Mats (2012) "'We Want Aluminum, No Excuses': Business-Government Relations in the American Aluminum Industry, 1917–1957," pp. 33–68 in From Warfare to Welfare: Business-Government Relations in the Aluminium Industry, ed. Mats Ingulstad and Hans Otto Frøland. Oslo: Tapir Academic Press, 2012.
- ^ Drozdov 2007, pp. 66–69.
- ^ Drozdov 2007, pp. 69–70.
- ^ Drozdov 2007, pp. 165–166.
- ^ Drozdov 2007, p. 135.
- ^ a b c d e "Aluminum". Historical Statistics for Mineral Commodities in the United States (Report). United States Geological Survey. 2017. Retrieved 9 November 2017.
- ^ Nappi 2013, p. 9.
- ^ Nappi 2013, pp. 12–13.
Bibliography
- Drozdov, Andrey (2007). Aluminium: The Thirteenth Element (PDF). RUSAL Library. ISBN 978-5-91523-002-5.
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(help) - Nappi, Carmine (2013). The global aluminium industry 40 years from 1972 (PDF) (Report). International Aluminium Institute. Retrieved 10 November 2017.
{{cite report}}
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(help) - Richards, Joseph William (1896). Aluminium: Its history, occurrence, properties, metallurgy and applications, including its alloys (3 ed.). Henry Carey Baird & Co.
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