Coventry University is helping an award-winning aluminium foundry explore how recycled aluminium can be processed into very high-grade materials essential to UK industry.
In the UK vital sectors such as automotive and defence rely on primary grade aluminium alloys for their products, but the country currently doesn’t produce enough and imports huge amounts of the material – up to 1.25 million tonnes – each year.
As part of the Clean Futures Programme, Coventry University has teamed up with West Midlands-based
Alucast to see how some end-of-life aluminium could be sourced and processed to meet this very high grade.
Much end-of-life aluminium is too contaminated to reach the purity required by certain UK industries but through studying the lifecycle of the material and the way it is processed after use, researchers at the university’s Institute for Advanced Manufacturing and Engineering (AME) have identified opportunities where it can be sourced and re-processed to the grade required.
By identifying these opportunities, the university is helping Alucast to reduce carbon emissions, reduce costs and preserve the planet’s resources.
Professor Marcos Kauffman, director of Coventry University’s Institute for Advanced Manufacturing and Engineering, said: “Our work together through the Clean Futures programme is a great example of directed, actionable research for immediate impact for both commercial and sustainability benefit.
“Exploring the use of direct sources of recycled aluminium to generate a pathway to utilising the recycle material in Alucast’s production has the triple benefit of onshoring the supply chain of a critical material production, developing viable alternative material feedstocks with lower price points and reducing embodied emissions by circumnavigating the incredibly energy-intensive aluminium ore reduction step of primary aluminium manufacturing.
“Projects like this have real meaningful benefit for UK manufacturers and the supply chains they support with their products. This protects and develops new jobs through creating points of commercial advantage to both keep UK manufacturing competitive and provide tangible linchpins of advantage for investment in UK manufacturing as the portfolio and system of circular products is developed and elevated.”
John Swift, director at Alucast, added: “With assistance from Coventry University, Alucast were able to source a different type of end-of-life aluminium scrap which after sorting and alloying up, we were able to achieve equivalent mechanical properties as primary grade aluminium in both test bars and automotive production castings