The recycling of standard quality wrought aluminum alloys from low-grade contaminated scrap

In recent decades an increasingly large fraction of the world’s wrought aluminum alloys supply has come from the aluminum scrap recovered from industrial waste and discarded post-consumer items. However, replacing even a minor part of primary aluminum in wrought alloys with recycled counterpart originated from lower grades of scrap (typically scrap contaminated with various non-metallic impurities) without influencing the quality of the allay is very demanding from a metallurgical point of view. This article discusses the two approaches for achieving the requested chemical composition of wrought alloys made from recycled aluminum: (i) before melting, by combining the appropriate qualities and quantities of scrap, primary aluminum, and the alloying elements and (ii) during melting, by diluting impurity content with primary aluminum to the needed level and adding, at the same time, the necessary amount of alloying elements for achieving their standard concentration in diluted melts.