Potash Alum from Waste Aluminum Cans and Medicinal Foil

Abstract

Modern beverage containers are usually composed of either aluminum in the form of aluminum cans, or polyethylene terephthalate (PETE).To produce single can the energy needed is about the same as that required keeping a 100-watt bulb light for 6 hours. That energy can be reduced by up to 95% by recycling used aluminum cans. Medicinal aluminum foil is very thin sheet of rolled aluminum supplied in its pure form or in a variety of alloys & tempers which give a wide choice of tensile properties. The thickness of foil ranges from the thinnest currently produces commercially at about 0.0065mm to the defined upper limit of 0.2mm. Aluminum is easily recycled. Plain aluminum foil can be compacted & remelted. Laminated aluminum is processed to separate the supporting layers & the aluminum residue is reused in other applications. In addition, the energy contained in thin foil component of a laminate can be recovered in the form of heat. But the cans recycling process is time consuming process & cost intensive. In this paper, instead of recycling aluminum into new metal cans, a chemical process will used to transform scrap aluminum into a useful chemical compound, potassium aluminum sulfate dodecahydrate KAl(SO 4) 2 .12H 2 O , Commonly called "alum" will be described.