Bayer Process - History

History

The Bayer process was invented in 1887 by Carl Josef Bayer. Working in Saint Petersburg, Russia to develop a method for supplying alumina to the textile industry (it was used as a mordant in dyeing cotton), Bayer discovered in 1887 that the aluminium hydroxide that precipitated from alkaline solution was crystalline and could be easily filtered and washed, while that precipitated from acid medium by neutralization was gelatinous and difficult to wash.

A few years earlier, Louis Le Chatelier in France developed a method for making alumina by heating bauxite in sodium carbonate, Na₂CO₃, at 1200°C, leaching the sodium aluminate formed with water, then precipitating aluminium hydroxide by carbon dioxide, CO₂, which was then filtered and dried. This process was abandoned in favor of the Bayer process.

The process began to gain importance in metallurgy together with the invention of the electrolytic aluminium process invented in 1886. Together with the cyanidation process invented in 1887, the Bayer process marks the birth of the modern field of hydrometallurgy.

Today, the process is virtually unchanged and it produces nearly all the world's alumina supply as an intermediate in aluminium production.

In 2010 large amounts of caustic red mud waste products were discharged into the Danube river during the Ajka alumina plant accident.