4 ms·
Eight percent of the earth's crust is aluminum. That's a lot. Of course, that doesn't mean that recycling aluminum is senseless - there's the energy cost of i
by radford-neal 4y ago
Eight percent of the earth's crust is aluminum. That's a lot.
Of course, that doesn't mean that recycling aluminum is senseless - there's the energy cost of isolating the aluminum to consider. But literally running out of aluminum is not something to worry about.
- thakoppno 4y agoAnyone up for doing the math about how long it would take to deplete that much aluminum at the rate this planet consumes aluminum? Does it take us past the point the sun melts the earth?
- WastingMyTime89 4y agoBecause of course we can mine the whole Earth crust. It’s a good thing our ability to effectively mine in not limited to a few kilometres and our ability to actually find ores is so amazing. I’m such a fool, sorry. More seriously, I’m done with sarcasms. We actually need to recycle aluminium. Smelting is far more energy intensive than extraction and depletion is a very real problem. First, viable gisements are not that common. Second, as we extract the best, we are faced by poorer and poorer quality of ores which mean the cost of smelting gets worse and worse. Aluminium is definitely not endless as someone would have you believe in a reply.
- JoeAltmaier 4y agoAluminum production exceeds that of all other non-ferrous metals combined. We're not anywhere near that description.