The World's Most Versatile Metal:
How Aluminum is Being Used in the 21^st Century…

As far as metals that are used in consumer products, aluminum is of fairly recent origin. Aluminum was first discovered in 1825 by Hans Christian Oersted. In fact, aluminum is the most abundant metal on Earth. As far as all of the elements that make up the Earth and its surrounding atmosphere, aluminum is the this most abundant element to be found. It comes in third position in quantity after oxygen and silicon.

Twenty five years after its initial discovery, Robert Bunsen (of Bunsen Burner fame) prepared the first sheet of aluminum metal. By 1886, the process which permitted the commercial manufacturing of products made from aluminum was perfected by two young men, Charles Martin Hall in the United States and Paul Heroult in France.

Aluminum has become a widely used material for a number of reasons. First of all, aluminum is very malleable. It can easily be formed and fashioned into a wide array of different items. Generally speaking, aluminum is both a strong and lightweight material that has many, many different applications. From commercial to consumer applications, aluminum is the element that people have the most direct contact with in their daily lives after the oxygen they breath.

Aluminum commonly is used in the manufacture of food and beverage container in this day and age. Aluminum replaced other materials and has become the primary container of choice for many types of food and beverage products in the 21st century.

Aluminum is widely used in the manufacture of cookware and cooking utensils. In addition to being sturdy and having a long, useful life, cookware made from aluminum requires only 25% of the energy to be heated as opposed to cookware made from iron or stainless steel.

Automobiles and aircraft use a great deal of aluminum in their construction in this day and age. For example, nearly all trailer trucks and long distance busses have aluminum bodies. A typical jumbo jet manufactured today has over 75,000 kilograms of aluminum in its body. Indeed, NASA's space shuttle is crafted and constructed with over 90% aluminum.

Aluminum is one of the items in the world that most frequently is recycled. The aluminum recycling process is rather simple. At the outset, the aluminum is crushed and then shredded. After it has been shredded into small pieces, the metal is then melted in a super hot furnace. Once the melting process is completed, the aluminum is then poured into castings. It is allowed to cool after which it is rolled into large sheets. After in sheet form, the aluminum is then ready to be reformatted into useful products.

A great deal of time, energy and money can be saved through the recycling of aluminum. An ever growing number of consumer products are manufactured from recycled aluminum in the 21st century.

Most industry analysts and experts predict that aluminum will be even more widely utilized in industrial, commercial and consumer products in foreseeable future.