Exploitation of chips and scrap aluminum through physical processes for the development of aluminum sheets and bars

Abstract

Colombia manufactures metals such as iron and aluminum, which consume a lot of energy to carry out these processes. There are many techniques to recycle metals and other elements to reduce the amount of energy in manufacturing processes, since smelting is generated with already manufactured materials, as in the case of aluminum, which uses recycled products such as soft drinks and beer cans. In addition, there is another type of scrap metal, such as aluminum shavings generated by machining processes, with an amount that varies from a small percentage to 70-90% of the original part. This project seeks to transform the aluminum shavings through physical processes with the application of temperature in aluminum material to be used again. The process begins with the collection of chips from mechanical workshops, in this case, from the machine tool laboratories of the “Universidad Francisco de Paula Santander, Ocaña, Colombia”. Standard procedures will be carried out before the casting process by developing firing curves and phase diagrams of aluminum, where the research focuses on generating aluminum metal to be used again in the laboratories of the same university.