Recycling of aluminum UBC

Used aluminum beverage cans (UBC) are able to be recycled into can body material (JIS3004) by remelting. However, in these remelting processes, such problems attributed to `paints' occur as unfavorable molten metal composition (primarily titanium) and lowering of molten metal yield. Consequently, for promoting recycling of aluminum UBC, removal of these `paints' is essential, and the paints have been removed by thermal or mechanical methods. This paper reports the development of a swell-peeling method in which paints are chemically removed. It also reports that the swell-peeling method successfully prevents the impurity element titanium from contaminating the molten metal and improves the molten metal yield simultaneously, ensuring the good possibility of promoting recycling of aluminum UBC.