Aluminium

Prising elements out of the Earth’s crust, purifying their essence and moulding them into crafts highlights the technical age of humanity. Steel becomes ploughshares, silicon melts into transistors and aluminium shines into pots and pans. By learning the characteristics of many elements and compounds, humans specialize material into being capable aids to our everyday existence.

Yet, no wizard’s wand transforms rock. Human labour, our sweat and skill, do it. However, somewhat magically, machines aid our tolling. Great shovels dig dirt, roaring blast furnaces separate and shape the elements. As such, aluminium requires about 200 MJ for every kilogram produced (Smil, 2008).

The world production of aluminium in 2007 was 36 000 thousand metric tons (USGS). In total then, we used about 7.2e18 joules of energy to transform the Earth’s material into our devices. That’s 1.58% of the global total of primary energy usage. In other words, we consider one element to be so precious that we allocate 1.58% of our annual supplies of non-renewable energy resources to extract it.

And, what do we do with it? In the U.S., the partition was; 38% transportation, 22% packaging, 16 % buildings, 7% electrical, 7% machinery, 7% consumer durables, and 3% others (USGS). Is this the best distribution of our energy resources? If supplies fail to meet demand, how should the partitioning change?

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