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:
“To expect to increase prices and then to maintain them at a higher level by means of a plan which must of necessity increase production while decreasing consumption is to fly in the face of an economic law as well established as any law of nature.”
—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)
“The production of obscurity in Paris compares to the production of motor cars in Detroit in the great period of American industry.”
—Ernest Gellner (b. 1925)
“By bourgeoisie is meant the class of modern capitalists, owners of the means of social production and employers of wage labor. By proletariat, the class of modern wage laborers who, having no means of production of their own, are reduced to selling their labor power in order to live.”
—Friedrich Engels (1820–1895)