Ingot Production Using Reverberatory Furnaces
The scrap aluminium is separated into a range of categories e.g. irony aluminium (engine blocks etc.), clean aluminium (alloy wheels). Depending on the specification of the required ingot casting it will depend on the type of scrap used in the start melt. Generally the scrap is charged to a reverberatory furnace (other methods appear to be either less economical and/ or dangerous) and melted down to form a "bath". The molten metal is tested using spectroscopy on a sample taken from the melt to determine what refinements are needed to produce the final casts. After the refinements have been added the melt may be tested several times to be able to fine tune the batch to the specific standard
Once the correct "recipe" of metal is available the furnace is tapped and poured into ingot moulds, usually via a casting machine. The melt is then left to cool, stacked and sold on as cast silicon aluminium ingot to various industries for re-use.
Read more about this topic: Aluminium Recycling
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