A lot of containers and household products are made from aluminum. This is a fairly valuable metal that can be melted into ingots to be handed over to a metal collection center. Many people require such high-quality castings for turning work, so it makes sense to make them yourself rather than buy them at exorbitant prices. Let's consider how to melt aluminum waste, what is suitable for this, and whether it is profitable to do this for selling castings for scrap.
What you will need:
- melting furnace;
- charcoal;
- crucible;
- mounting hair dryer;
- salt;
- soda;
- small aluminum scrap and waste;
- casting molds.
Aluminum waste remelting process and calculations
To accurately calculate the resources spent, the visual experiment will use 1 kg of coal, as well as 1.2 kg of aluminum scrap and waste. A melting furnace with an empty crucible installed is filled with half of the coal after ignition. While it is gaining temperature, this is about 7 minutes for this equipment, you need to provide air supply. In the absence of a more economical option, a 2 kW hair dryer does this.
When the crucible is hot, thin-walled aluminum trash is thrown into it as quickly as possible. The presence of fluid metal at the bottom will further speed up the melting of more massive products. First, beer cans, tin cans, shells from armored cables, photodrums from a printer cartridge, aerosol cans, cosmetics, tubes of ointment, glue, and molds from candles and tablets are thrown in and compacted. Then you can place larger aluminum products in the crucible, such as wire, radiators, spoons, forks, etc. That is, you can put anything into melting.
As it burns, the charcoal is added and the hairdryer is turned on for a few minutes. After melting the metal, you need to let it boil for 5 minutes, then add flux. It uses a handful of a mixture based on soda and salt. Then the metal is mixed and the slag is removed. After this, it can be poured into molds.
As a result, from 1.2 kg of recyclable materials, which no metal receiving station accepts, we got 1.01 kg of commercial metal. 850 grams were used for melting. charcoal, 0.5 kWh of electricity to operate a hair dryer, and a handful of salt and soda. Based on these data, it is possible to calculate the actual benefit when submitting such blanks for acceptance in a specific region. If you make charcoal yourself and use a more economical fan to blow air, then there are benefits to home processing.
