Environmental Benefits of Aluminium Waste Recycling
Landfilled aluminium salt cake can cause environmental problems especially ammonia air emissions and salt-laden groundwater contamination. There is also evidence of ongoing exothermic reactions from the salt cake following landfill resulting in the generation of noxious gases into the atmosphere. Salt cake recycling and avoidance of landfill eliminates these problems.
Aluminium recovered from recycled salt cake also has significant carbon emission reduction benefits, due to energy savings in re-using the recovered metal. Recycling aluminium uses 95% less energy than production of aluminium from bauxite.
Alcoa has been promoting the ‘Green Can’ concept – an infinitely recyclable product with no resultant waste. This is only achievable due to MHM’s salt cake recycling technology.
In Australia Alreco will implement an evaporation system that will produce a crystalline salt from salt cake treatment. Alreco will use solar evaporation for salt crystallisation as the most environmentally friendly method of recovering salt. In this process there is no carbon energy required again supporting MHM’s ethos of providing a cleaner environment for the aluminium industry.

