“Aluminium is at the very heart of the sustainable industrial revolution, a ‘green’, highly-recyclable metal lauded for its superior physical and chemical properties that can technically last forever”, John Courtenay, Chairman of MQP, the leading specialist for the global aluminium industry and producer of high-efficiency grain refiner Optifine

Aluminium is at the very heart of the sustainable industrial revolution, a ‘green’, highly-recyclable metal lauded for its superior physical and chemical properties that can technically last forever. However, elements of the production process are, undeniably, damaging to the environment, the production of grain refiner, for one.

As a specialist in the field, the addition of grain refiner in the production of billets and slabs is absolutely vital for eliminating cracking, waste and poor quality material and ensuring better quality finished products. But its manufacture does produce noxious fluoride emissions.

To make one tonne of grain refiner, you need 117 kg KBF₄ and 251 kg K₂TiF₆. This equates to 368kg of fluoride salts per ton of GR produced, or around 36,800t consumed per year worldwide. From this 350 kg /t of KAlF₄, 35,000t remains as a by-product, which has to be disposed of, most of which finds application influxes for treating aluminium. From the balance, a substantial amount of F₂ is ultimately released into the atmosphere. If the world was to adopt Optifine, these fluorides by-products and emissions would be reduced by two thirds.

With our Optifine grain refiner, we’ve produced a highly-efficient product that consistently delivers and means casthouses only need to use a third of standard TiBAI grain refiners typically used. And by significantly improving melt quality and drastically reducing the amount they need to use, casthouses can further reduce their carbon footprint. Using less refiner also means less coil changes and transportation around the casthouse and lower warehouse inventory.

We want this efficiency to be even higher and by doing so, reduce aluminium waste and carbon emissions. This is why we are working in partnership with academics at the Brunel Centre for Advanced Solidification Technology (BCAST) at Brunel University London on a three-year project led by the esteemed Professor Zhongyun Fan.

You only need 5% of the original production energy to recycle aluminium and no original properties are lost in the recycling process, with reportedly nearly 75% of all aluminium ever produced still in use. When you look at it like this, it’s easy to see why aluminium is the star of the show in a world ever more focused on climate change.

However, while aluminium can, technically, be recycled forever making products that do not meet the incredibly high standards and discerning criteria of today’s manufacturing will and does result in huge waste. The automotive sector, for one, as they rapidly move away from steel in the domestic market. 

After discovering that the effectiveness of grain refiner can be maximised by the development of an Al3Ti monoatomic layer on the surface of TiB2 particles in the aluminium alloy, BCAST is using samples of Optifine to test what they had proved in the lab and improve aluminium quality and its environmental impact on a global scale. In tests, Optifine was shown to reduce the particle count in molten aluminium up to 70%, with the potential to reduce defects proportionately – and through the BCAST research using High-Resolution Transmission Electron Microscopy (HRTEM) – to go even higher.

To demonstrate our support for the sustainability of aluminium, we are also sponsoring Brunel’s University London’s new £4.5m Centre for Circular Metals, an exciting research centre that aims to help the UK become the first country to fully recycle and reuse its metals and shift the country towards a carbon-neutral, circular economy by 2050. As a key industry partner, we are keen to play our part in this ‘green’ mission. Recycling aluminium for use in sectors such as aerospace and automotive could contribute more than £100 billion to the economy over the next decade too.”