Through a circular economy production model, SuperAlloy Industrial (SAI) not only reduces the purchase volume of primary aluminum and costs, but also significantly lowers the carbon footprint of its products.
Aluminum is the automotive material with the fastest growing usage rate. Major car manufacturers have also announced their own carbon neutral year goals, and some automakers have announced plans to enhance the percentage of recycled aluminum in their production. The forging process of high-grade aluminum alloy wheels produces scraps of different shapes, which account for about 70% of the total weight of raw materials, it was difficult to recycle them in the past.
Recycling of aluminum materials from production processes
In 2020, SAI invested in the construction of a smelting plant in Pingtung to collect, separate, cut, and crush scraps from the forging process, aluminum bits from machines, and defective products scrapped from the polishing and painting processes. By doing so, SAI has transformed these scraps into raw materials for the smelting furnace to produce recycled aluminum billets. The aluminum slag produced by condensation on the surface of the liquid aluminum, as well as the aluminum powder and tailings produced by sectioning the aluminum billets, are all recycled and re-smelted to form an in-plant circular system.
Heat recovery and reuse
Through the furnace design, the high-temperature hot gas from the furnace in the smelting system is recovered and used for the pre-treatment and drying of scraps, reducing the use of natural gas in the pretreatment process by up to 100%.
Continuing to expand applications
The SAI smelting plant currently produces 40,000 tons of recycled aluminum per year and will continue to increase its production capacity. The current utilization rate of recycled aluminum materials in the production of forged aluminum wheels is 30%. Following the certification and adoption by car manufacturers, this is expected to reach 40% in 2024, 50% in 2025, and the ultimate goal is to achieve a utilization rate of 65% [1].
Benefits
- The carbon emissions of recycled aluminum are only 5% of those of primary aluminum.
- Reduce the purchase volume of primary aluminum, also lower purchasing costs by 10-15% compared with aluminum materials purchased through conventional channels.
[1] The ultimate goal is to achieve a recycled aluminum utilization rate of 65% to maintain a certain proportion of primary aluminum sources so as to generate enough scraps to be recycled into recycled aluminum.