Recycling without Melting: An Alternative Approach to Aluminum Scrap Recovery

Method of scrap recovery by hot extrusion in a contrast to traditional aluminum recycling process distinguishes itself with a low energy consumption and high recovery efficiency. Additionally, this type of recycling allows to recover materials even from highly fragmented forms of metal like chips, foils or filings by omitting melting procedure. In the present study results of 413.0 aluminum chips plastic consolidation will be presented. Chips after machining process were used as a charge material for the entire recycling process. In order to determined the best emulsion elimination method, three separate processes such as centrifugation, annealing and pressing were carried out. In result dry, wet and cleaned chips in a form of cylindrical billets were hot extruded into longitudinal square cross-section profiles. Mechanical properties were examined by uniaxial tensile tests while microstructure observations were performed by means of scanning electron microscopy. It has been showed that emulsion elimination by annealing gives the best results while at the same time all extruded materials revealed no significant differences in mechanical properties.