- Write by:
-
Friday, December 6, 2019 - 12:02:48 PM
-
1001 Visit
-
Print
Mining News Pro - Apple Inc on Thursday said it has bought the first-ever commercial batch of carbon-free aluminum from a joint venture between two of the world’s biggest aluminum suppliers.
According to Mining News Pro - The metal is being made by Elysis, a Montreal-based joint venture of Alcoa Corp and Rio Tinto announced last year with $144 million in funding from the two companies, Apple and the governments of Canada and Quebec.
The aluminum will be shipped this month from an Alcoa research facility in Pittsburgh and used in Apple products, although the technology company did not say which ones.
Aluminum is carbon-intensive to produce. The smelting process involves passing electrical current through a large block of carbon called an anode, which burns off during the process and releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
The carbon-free move is a response to consumer, activist and investor demand that miners and manufacturers show they are working to lessen their impact on climate change.
“For more than 130 years, aluminum – a material common to so many products consumers use daily – has been produced the same way. That’s about to change,” Lisa Jackson, Apple’s vice president of environment, policy and social initiatives, said in a statement.
Apple uses aluminum housings for many of its electronics, including iPhones, Apple Watches and Mac computers. Apple last year introduced Mac models that use recycled aluminum.
The Alcoa-Rio joint venture wants to commercialize a technology by 2024 that uses a ceramic anode to make aluminum and emits only oxygen, eliminating direct greenhouse gas emissions from the smelting process.
Alcoa has already produced test metal with the process and joined with Rio Tinto to bring it up to commercial scale. Elysis plans to license the technology and says that existing smelting facilities can be retrofitted to use it.
The first batch was made in Pittsburgh, but Elysis also plans to manufacture it at a $50 million CAD research facility being built in Saguenay, Quebec, and that is expected to come online in the second half of 2020.
Apple and Elysis would not disclose the size or cost of the first purchase. They described it as a “commercial batch,” and Elysis said the process is expected to have lower operating costs than traditional aluminum smelting.
Short Link:
https://www.miningnews.ir/En/News/453342
The London Metal Exchange is imposing new rules surrounding the movement of metal in its warehousing network, taking aim ...
The London Metal Exchange (LME) on Saturday banned from its system Russian metal produced on or after April 13 to comply ...
Vietnam’s top miner Vinacomin plans to invest 182 trillion dong ($7.3 billion) to ramp up its alumina-aluminum ...
Copper jumped to its highest intraday price since January 2023 as the bellwether industrial metal faces rising tighter ...
The US Energy Department on Monday announced $6 billion in federal funding to subsidize 33 industrial projects in 20 ...
Aluminum prices touched an 11-week high on Monday over concerns over slow recovery in production in China’s Yunnan ...
Alcoa will buy Alumina in an all-stock deal that values the Australian firm at $2.2 billion, and makes the US company ...
Rio Tinto said on Thursday it had been notified of an incident at its Queensland gas pipeline, which Australian media ...
The US Department of Commerce announced on Tuesday preliminary countervailing duties on aluminum extrusions from China, ...
No comments have been posted yet ...