Production
Virtually all the aluminium hydroxide used commercially is manufactured by the Bayer process which involves dissolving bauxite in sodium hydroxide at temperatures up to 270°C. The remaining solids, which is a red mud, is separated and aluminium oxide is precipitated from the remaining solution. This red mud is damaging to the environment and highly toxic. It is usually stored in large artificial lakes, this is what led to the Ajka alumina plant accident in 2010 in Hungary, killing nine people and injuring 122. The dam holding back the red mud burst allowing it to contaminate large areas of land and waterways. The aluminium oxide that is produced can be converted to aluminium hydroxide through reaction with water.
Read more about this topic: Aluminium Hydroxide
Famous quotes containing the word production:
“Constant revolutionizing of production ... distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“In the production of the necessaries of life Nature is ready enough to assist man.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The myth of unlimited production brings war in its train as inevitably as clouds announce a storm.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)