j o u r n a l o f m a t e r i a l s p r o c e s s i n g t e c h n o l o g y 2 0 9 ( 2 0 0 9 ) 31383142

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jmatprotec

Recycling of aluminium alloy turning scrap via cold pressing

and melting with salt ux
H. Amini Mashhadi , A. Moloodi, M. Golestanipour, E.Z.V. Karimi
Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Iranian Academic Center for Education Culture and Research (ACECR) of Mashhad
Shariati Complex, P.O. Box 91735-1319, Serah Adabiat Street, Mashhad, Iran

a r t i c l e

i n f o

a b s t r a c t

Article history:

Among the various steps of aluminium production from liquid metal, a lot of scrap is gener-

Received 13 September 2007

ated due to machining operations. Therefore, recycling of aluminium scrap is an interesting

Received in revised form

subject because of the broad applications of this metal and low efciency of processes used

28 June 2008

to recycle metal scrap. In this paper, the recyclability of aluminium alloy AA 336 turnings

Accepted 12 July 2008

with different cold compacting pressures and a protective salt ux (NaClKClKF) has been
experimentally studied. Various categories of compacted samples were melted at 750 C in
molten aluminium alloy AA 336 and also in the protective salt ux to recover aluminium

Keywords:

alloy. In order to understand the amount of recycling of different samples, weight loss mea-

Aluminium alloy scrap

surement was applied. From recyclability stand point it is shown that using protective salt

Recycling

ux is the best route, from the point of view of recyclability. Mechanical properties and chem-

Cold press

ical analysis of samples were approximately the same as the primary material produced by

Salt ux

conventional casting process.

2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Melting

1.

Introduction

The recycling of aluminium scrap has signicant economic,

energy, environmental and resource savings implications
(Campbell, 1996; Henstock, 1996). Compared to the primary
aluminium production, aluminium recycling has a great
advantage due to lower production cost (Logozar et al., 2006;
Zhou et al., 2006).
When metal products are manufactured, considerable
amounts of waste in the form of chips and discards are
produced. The chips deriving from the machining of seminished aluminium products are very difcult to recycle by
conventional methods due to their elongated spiral shape,
small size, surface contamination with oxides, machining oil,
etc (Gronostajski and Matuszak, 1999; Gronostajski et al., 2000;
Samuel, 2003; Fogagnolo et al., 2003).

Corresponding author. Tel.: +98 511 844 0117; fax: +98 511 843 0865.
E-mail address: h amini m@yahoo.com (H. Amini Mashhadi).
0924-0136/$ see front matter 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.jmatprotec.2008.07.020

During the recycling of the waste, a lot of metal is lost

as a result of oxidation; it also increases the general costs of
labour and energy as well as the expenditures on environmental protection. In the recent years, some processes have been
suggested to recycle aluminium scrap by several techniques
such as direct conversion of chips into compacted form, powder metallurgy, extrusion and re-melting by using protective
salt (Gronostajski et al., 2000).
Through reviewing the information in the literature for the
aluminium recycling, it was clear that most efforts were laid
on the economics, process analysis and industrial technology.
For the fundamental research, several papers were found for
discussing the recycling of used beverage cans and aluminium
dross (Peterson, 1990; Roy and Sahai, 1998; Utigard et al., 1998;
Ye and Sahai, 1996). In the authors previous work, various aluminium scrap were characterized and melted under different

j o u r n a l o f m a t e r i a l s p r o c e s s i n g t e c h n o l o g y 2 0 9 ( 2 0 0 9 ) 31383142

Table 1 Typical chemical analysis (wt%) of used

material
Si
Cu
Mg
Ni
Al

12.47
1.1
1.01
0.94
Bal.

experimental conditions, including rolling mill cuttings, cast

ingots, margarine foils, and bottle caps (Xiao et al., 2000).
Several investigations have also been done to improve
productivity during an aluminium recycling process so that
high-quality products can be produced at low cast, such as
using the Taguchi method for parameter design which provides the designer with a systematic and efcient approach
for conducting experimentation to determine near optimum
setting of design parameters for performance and cost (Khoei
et al., 2002).
But in spite of importance of effect of both salt ux and
cold pressing on physical and mechanical properties of aluminium alloy scraps, this subject has not been paid attention
by investigators. Thus the main goal of the current study is to
ll the literature gap appeared in this eld.
In the present paper, the melting experiments were carried
out in an electrical resistance furnace in a laboratory scale at
750 C. For some specimens the NaClKClKF system was used
as the salt ux for protecting metal from oxidation. The objective is to study the recyclability of different pressed samples by
weight loss measurement in various conditions including only
melting the samples, re-melting in the molten AA 336 and salt
ux. This research also compares the mechanical properties
of samples with each other and with that of the initial ingot
of AA 336.

2.

Experimental procedure

The chemical composition of chips collected directly from

machine shops is summarized in Table 1.
Aluminium alloy chips were cold pressed at different
pressures to determine the compressibility curve. A oating
cylindrical die with a diameter of 24 mm was used. The sam-

3139

ples were initially cold pressed at various pressures according

to Table 2. The pressed samples were subjected to three procedures: the rst series were melted in a crucible, the second
introduced into molten AA 336 and the third series of samples
were added into salt ux.
Melting of samples was carried out according to the conditions listed in Table 2.
To evaluate the inuence of pressing conditions and salt
ux on the recyclability, two types of measurements were carried out:
Quantometric analysis on all specimens.
Weight loss percentages of produced samples were calculated using the following equation:

X=

M1 M2
100
M1

where M1 is the initial weight of scrap and M2 is the weight of

produced specimens.
The consolidated materials were characterized by optical
and electronic microscopy and some of them were also characterized by tensile strength.

3.

Results and discussion

3.1.

Compressibility curve

Fig. 1 presents the compressibility curve for the AA 336 aluminium alloy chips. From this curve, the optimum result was
obtained at a pressure of about 900 MPa; this pressure can
produce compacted chips with a density of about 2.5 g/cm3 .

3.2.

Weight loss

The weight of charged crucible before and after the experiments was measured.
The weight loss percentages of produced samples listed
in Table 2 are shown in Fig. 2. Because of high reactivity
of aluminium and its extremely tendency to oxidation, it is
noticeable that the recycling of crucible samples were very
low and some specimens (S and CP3) were completely became

Table 2 List of produced samples and their production condition

Procedure

Designation of products

Production condition

Crucible

Ref.
S
CP3
CP6
CP9

Melted ingot as reference specimen

Scrap melted at 750 C
Cold pressed at 300 MPa and melted at 750 C
Cold pressed at 600 MPa and melted at 750 C
Cold pressed at 900 MPa and melted at 750 C

Molten
AA
336

SM
CP3M
CP6M
CP9M

Melting the scrap in molten AA 336 aluminium alloy at 750 C

Cold pressed at 300 MPa and melted in molten AA 336 aluminium alloy at 750 C
Cold pressed at 600 MPa and melted in molten AA 336 aluminium alloy at 750 C
Cold pressed at 900 MPa and melted in molten AA 336 aluminium alloy at 750 C

Salt
ux

SS
CP3S
CP6S
CP9S

Melting the scrap into KCl, NaCl and KF ux at 750 C

Cold pressed at 300 MPa and melted into KCl, NaCl and KF ux at 750 C
Cold pressed at 600 MPa and melted into KCl, NaCl and KF ux at 750 C
Cold pressed at 900 MPa and melted into KCl, NaCl and KF ux at 750 C

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j o u r n a l o f m a t e r i a l s p r o c e s s i n g t e c h n o l o g y 2 0 9 ( 2 0 0 9 ) 31383142

Fig. 1 Compressibility curve of AA 336 aluminium alloy

scrap.

Fig. 3 The effect of pressure on recyclability (scrap melted

in molten AA 336 series).

Table 4 Mechanical properties of samples Ref., CP9M

and CP9S

Ultimate tensile strength (MPa)

Elastic modulus (GPa)
Elongation (%)
Hardness (HB)

Ref.

CP9M

CP9S

207.68
125.3
2.06
59.2

201.21
126.7
2.01
59.1

199.89
124.6
1.99
58.5

protective salt ux to eliminate oxidation of cold pressed

samples.

Fig. 2 Weight loss of produced samples.

oxide. On the other hand, the weight losses of the salt ux

samples (SS, CP3S, CP6S and CP9S) are the lowest.
It can be observed that an increase in the pressing pressure produces higher degrees of consolidation. However,
even the highest level of pressure does not yield satisfactory results (Fig. 3), since some weight loss is still present,
which implies the need for an additional process, i.e. using

3.3.

Chemical analysis

The chemical compositions of the recovered samples are given

in Table 3. Comparing with Table 1, it is noticeable that the
major elements of all products are in the range of AA 336
aluminium alloy ingot (reference specimen).

3.4.

Mechanical properties

The ultimate tensile strength, elastic modulus, elongation and

hardness of the best recovered samples are depicted in Table 4.

Table 3 Chemical composition (wt%) of samples produced in this study

Designation of products

Chemical composition (wt%)

Si

Ref.
S
Cn
CP6
CP9
SM
CP3M
CP6M
CP9M
SS
CP3S
CP6S
CP9S

12.3014.25

13.60
13.31
13.02
12.85
13.40
13.97
13.92
14.20
14.13
14.22

Mg
0.000.60

0.22
0.32
0.42
0.56
0.37
0.38
0.02
0.23
0.24
0.19

Comments

Cu

Ni

1.301.60

1.46
1.44
1.42
1.41
1.41
1.39
1.36
1.43
1.44
1.40

0.901.00

0.97
0.99
0.96
0.95
0.94
0.93
0.93
0.91
0.91
0.89

Reference specimen
Complete oxidation of products
Complete oxidation of products

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4.

3141

Conclusions

The ndings in this investigation can be summarized as follows:

a. Higher cold pressing pressure leads to higher density of
cold pressed samples and lower weight loss of products
but the increase of pressure over 900 MPa has no signicant
effect on increasing green density and decreasing weight
loss.
b. The pressure of cold pressing has no signicant effect on
reducing weight loss during melting cold pressed specimens in salt ux.
c. Major elements of all products are in the range of AA 336
aluminium alloy ingot.
d. Melting cold pressed specimens in salt ux and in molten
aluminium alloy produces samples with mechanical properties almost equal to the samples obtained from melting
ingot.

Acknowledgements
Authors wish to thank of Mrs. M.H. Sadeghian and Dr.
Babakhani from Ferdowsi University of Mashhad.

references

Fig. 4 Fracture surface of samples: (a) reference, (b) CP9S

and (c) CP9M.

It is shown that ultimate tensile strength, elastic modulus,

elongation and hardness of cold pressed specimens melted
with salt ux and molten aluminium alloy were almost the
same as melted ingot.
Examination of fracture surfaces by SEM reveals that, ductile fracture is prominent (reference and CP9S samples). It can
also be seen that with increasing the weight loss, the fracture
surfaces tend to change towards cleavage mode (CP9M); representative examples are given in Fig. 4. This behavior could
be caused by the presence of oxide inclusions corresponding
to high weight loss which decrease the ductility.

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