ALUMINUM University of Wisconsin–Madison（铝威斯康星大学麦迪逊分校）.pdf

ALUMINUM Aluminum is the most abundant metal and the third most abundant element in the earths crust, after oxygen and silicon. It makes up about 8% by weight of the earth’s solid surface. Aluminum is too reactive chemically to occur naturally as the free metal. Instead, it is found combined in over 270 different minerals. The chief ore of aluminum is bauxite, a mixture of hydrated aluminum oxide (Al O xH O) and hydrated iron oxide (Fe O xH O). Another mineral important in the 2 3 2 2 3 2 production of aluminum metal is cryolite (Na AlF ). However, cryolite is not used as an ore; the aluminum is not 3 6 extracted from it. Metallic aluminum was first prepared by Hans Oersted, a Danish chemist, in 1825. He obtained the metal by heating dry aluminum chloride with potassium metal. AlCl3 + 3 K  Al + 3 KCl Robert Bunsen prepared aluminum metal in the 1850s by passing an electric current though molten sodium aluminum chloride. However, because both potassium metal and electricity were quite expensive, aluminum remained a laboratory chemical and a curiosity until after the invention of the mechanical electrical generator. In 1886, Charles Martin Hall of Oberlin, Ohio, and Paul Héroult of France, who were both 22 years old at the time, independently discovered and patented the process in which aluminum oxide is dissolved in molten cryolite and decomposed electrolytically. The Hall-Héroult process remains the only method by which aluminum metal is produced commercially. The first step in the commercial production of aluminum is the separation of aluminum oxide from the iron oxide in bauxite. This