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Resources, Conservation and Recycling 52 (2008) 731–736

An experimental study of aluminum can recycling

using fusion in induction furnace
G.O. Verran ∗ , U. Kurzawa
State University of Santa Catarina – Udesc, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Campus Universitário Prof. Avelino
Marcante s/n, 89223-100 Joinville, Santa Catarina, Brazil
Received 21 May 2007; received in revised form 5 October 2007; accepted 17 October 2007

Abstract
The present study investigates the influence of casting parameters on efficiency in aluminum can recycling using electric induction
furnace. The cans were compacted in “packages” using high pressure. Initially, the flux amount was maintained constant (20 wt.%),
but the temperature of the bath and melt treatment were changed. Next, using two different bath temperatures (750 and 850 ◦ C)
and melt treatment with an intensive mixture of flux in molten aluminum, flux amount was changed. The recovered aluminum was
poured into permanent molds. Results were assessed computing the efficiency of the recycling process defined as a relation between
the recycled and the original amount of aluminum. Chemical composition was evaluated by optical emission spectroscopy. Results
indicated that the use of bath temperatures above 750 ◦ C and flux amount of at least 10 wt.% leads to good recovery of aluminum
after the recycling of cans.
© 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Recycling; Aluminum; Aluminum cans; Casting; Flux

1. Introduction Can recycling is responsible for placing Brazil for

Recycling of aluminum, particularly aluminum bev-
erage cans is important due to several economic and
environmental reasons. Recycling of aluminum requires
only 5% of the energy for primary aluminum production.
During the last decades interest has been focused on recy-
cling of aluminum cans. Recycling of 1 kg of aluminum
beverage cans saves up to 8 kg of bauxite, 4 kg of chem-
ical products and 14 kWh of electricity (International
Aluminium Institute, 2007).
∗ Corresponding author at: UDESC, Universidade do Estado de
Santa Catarina, Centro de Ciências Tecnológicas, Campus Uni-
versitário Prof. Avelino Marcante s/n, 89223-100 Joinville, Santa
Catarina, Brazil. Tel.: +55 47 40097934; fax: +55 47 40097940.
E-mail address: gverran@joinville.udesc.br (G.O. Verran).
five consecutive years at the top of the aluminum inter-
national ranking of the activity. In 2005, Brazil surpassed
the international record of beverage aluminum can recy-
cling. 96.2%–127.6 thousand tons of aluminum can
were recycled in 2005, which corresponds to something
around 9.4 billions of cans per year or 26 millions of cans
per day, or even, more than a million per hour (Abal,
2007a,b).
With the efforts performed by the recycling chain –
plates and cans manufacturers, beverage bottlers, work-
ers cooperatives and recyclers – and by the Government,
through the awareness of the population, the aluminium
can recycling program is, today, a successful experience
with great social, economic, and environmental influ-
ence. Only the collecting phase (the acquisition of used
cans) injects annually R$ 490 millions in the Brazilian

0921-3449/$ – see front matter © 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.resconrec.2007.10.001
732 G.O. Verran, U. Kurzawa / Resources, Conservation and Recycling 52 (2008) 731–736
economy, a financial volume equivalent to companies
that are among the 500 biggest of the country data of
2005. The result is product of the association of several
factors. The most important of then is the fact that the
country owns a recycling market already established in
all regions. Besides that, the easy procedures for collect-
ing, transporting and selling and high price of the alu-
minum scrap, combined with the great availability of the
material during all the year, promotes the beverage alu-
minum can recycling, stimulating changes of consumer
behavior. It is notorious the importance of aluminum
cans for the activity of recycling in Brazil. Besides rein-
forcing the ecologic consciousness of the population, it
incentives the collect of other materials (Abal, 2007a,b).
In the United States, recent publications (Dunleavy,
2006; Henry, 2007; Toto, 2006) have shown that there
has been a great effort to increase can recycling. Toto
(2007) describes a program developed by Atlanta-based
Novelis, a spin-off of Alcan and a global leader in alu-
minum rolling and can recycling, it has adopted the
Cans for Cash program to reduce loss of aluminum cans
due to landfill. Alcan started the program in 2004 in
partnership with the US Conference of Mayors, a non-
partisan organization of cities with populations of 30,000
or more. Under the program, there are four population
divisions: division 1, 250,000 and above; division 2,
100,000–249,999; division 3, 50,000–99,999; division 4,
up to 49,000. The program awards $5,000 for recycling to
the cities that collect the most cans in each division. The
program awards $5,000 to second largest can collector
of each categories for their innovative ideas, promot-
ing aluminum can recycling. Keep America Beautiful
(KAB) joined the Cans for Cash partnership to encour-
age community participation in 2006. KAB encourages
cities to partner with their local affiliates to promote the
recycling of cans.
The Swedish aluminum beverage can market reached
0.84 billion cans in 1990. The recycling rate was 83.3%.
All collected cans are delacquered in a special pretreat-
ment unit before being remelted together with ‘can/can
stock’ production scrap in a 3000 kW channel induction
furnace. No virgin metal is added. The resulting high
quality AA3004 material is cast to slabs and rolled to
0.33 mm can body stock. The delacquering and remelt-
ing processes are performed in such a way that metal
loss and environmental impact are minimised. Above all
by continous adjustment of the combustion conditions in
the delacquering unit a very effective destruction of toxic
organic compounds is achieved (Knutsson and Sjoeberg,
1991).
Despite the relevance of this activity, the litera-
ture shows few experimental studies concerning casting
parameter influence on recovery after aluminum can
recycling (Tenório et al., 1995; Verran et al., 2005).
Recent studies have investigated the effect of melt
treatment and some process parameters on the efficiency
in aluminum recycling.
Majidi et al. (2007) have studied the effect of fluxing
temperature on the refining process of molten aluminum.
Results indicated that optimum temperature of fluxing
is about 740 ◦ C, at which flux can effectively remove
oxides and inclusions from aluminum melts; and that
refining will not be very effective in fluxing temperatures
below 700 ◦ C.
Rabah (2003) has presented a method focused
on updating the current recycling technology by
augmenting the removal of the paint coating, decreas-
ing magnesium loss during melting and improving
hydrochloric acid leaching of the formed slag. For refin-
ing purposes, iron present in the leaching solution was
removed by oxidation using oxygen gas or hydrogen
peroxide and filtered as goethite. Parameters affecting
the extent of recovery and quality of the products were
investigated. Results show optimum recovery efficiency,
about 96.6%, at temperatures around 800 ◦ C.
Some papers have enfatized the advantages of the
use of medium frequency coreless induction furnaces
for recycling aluminum scrap. A major contributory fac-
tor has been the high metal recovery levels, particularly
for clean, high surface area scrap, in comparison to other
furnace types (Smith, 1994).
Schmidt (1988) has related the advantage of the spe-
cial characteristics of the coreless electric induction
melter in replacing to fuel-fired reverberatory furnaces
that are traditional in the aluminum industry. Taking into
account both material and conversion costs, the net cost
of molten metal delivered to the die casting machines has
been cut 25–30%, compared with the previous fuel-fired
melting.
MacIntosh (1983) has discussed about this subject.
He analyzes the advantages of using an induction furnace
for secondary aluminium recovery over the use of the
direct-fired furnaces.
In other work, Smith (1995) describes the develop-
ment and optimization of electrically based technologies
for metal melting and melt processing. The work relates
to both ferrous and non-ferrous foundry sectors and in the
case of aluminum, to their material suppliers, namely the
secondary ingot producers.In recent publication Luzgin
et al. (2004) have described the role of induction melt-
ing units in processing the secondary raw materials,
the application of electromagnetic fields during smelt-
ing and casting of non-ferrous metals and technical
characteristic of the melting induction plants.Recently,
 G.O. Verran, U. Kurzawa / Resources, Conservation and Recycling 52 (2008) 731–736 733

Dispinar and Campbell (2007) has presented a study in a Table 1

secondary alloy ingot producing plant targeted to inves- Experimental conditions
tigate the metal quality change in the holding furnace Experiment Melt treatment Casting temperature (◦ C)
during secondary remelting of aluminum alloy LM24 01 Without mixture 700
(Al–8Si–3Cu–Fe. The investigation was an attempt to 02 Without mixture 750
understand the effect of: (i) the use of diffusers (porous 03 Without mixture 800
plugs integrated into the body of the furnace) and (ii) 04 Without mixture 850
casting techniques involving different degrees of turbu- 05 With mixture 700
06 With mixture 750
lence. Casting density and biofilm index were found to be 07 With mixture 800
useful parameters to assess metal quality. It was found 08 With mixture 850
that the metal quality was increased significantly, and
was maintained high throughout the casting operation
when: (i) diffusers were used and (ii) turbulence was tal temperature, the melt treatment was given under two
reduced to a minimum. conditions: addition of flux to the surface of melt with-
In this study attempts have been made to improve the out mixture and intensive mixture of flux in the bath. The
efficiency in recycling and quality of aluminum recycled. flux amount was 20 wt.% of the total melt. A commercial
A preliminary study (Verran et al., 2005) has evaluated flux based on potassium and sodium chlorides was used.
the influence of flux amount on recovery after aluminum Concerning fluxing temperatures, four different ones
can recycling. The influence of casting temperature, melt (700, 750, 800 and 850 ◦ C) were investigated. The exper-
treatment and flux amount were investigated. imental conditions have been presented in Table 1. After
fluxing and skimming the melt, recovered aluminum was
2. Experimental procedure poured into permanent moulds.
The chemical composition of the casting ingots was
The cans were compacted in packages of 50 cans analyzed in all experiments using an Optical Emission
using a hydraulic press and a die specially designed and Spectrometer Shimadzu OES 5500 II.
manufactured for this purpose, as shown in Fig. 1. The results of recovery were assessed computing the
The experiments were conducted in an induction fur- efficiency of the recycling process, defined as a relation
nace of 40 kW, using a graphite crucible with capacity to between recycled and original amount of aluminum.
melt until 1.3 kg of aluminum. In order to obtain differ- Based on a previous analysis of the first series of
ent experimental melt temperatures, potencies ranging experiments, the parameters to the second series of
from 2 to 4 kW were used, resulting in heat times around experiments were defined.
20–25 min. In this second series, two fluxing temperatures (750
In the first series of experiments, influence of fluxing and 850 ◦ C) and an intensive mixture of flux in the bath
temperature and melt treatment were investigated. After were used, only the flux amount was changed. Table 2
total melting of charge and acquisition of experimen- shows the experimental conditions used.

Fig. 1. Equipments and cans package.

734 G.O. Verran, U. Kurzawa / Resources, Conservation and Recycling 52 (2008) 731–736

Table 2
Second experimental series conditions
Experiment Casting temperature (◦ C) Flux quantity (wt.%)

01 750 20
02 850 20
03 750 10
04 850 10
05 750 5
06 850 5
07 750 2
08 850 2
09 750 1
10 850 1
11 750 0
12 850 0 Fig. 3. Efficiency vs. flux quantities.

3. Results and discussion
The results of efficiency in aluminum recycling from
the first experimental series are shown in Fig. 2 for the
conditions without and with flux mixture to the melt.
It is seen that the use of flux mixture was more
effective as compared to no mixture of flux in all
melt temperatures investigated. Increases in melt tem-
peratures leads to increases in efficiency values. This
confirms that melt treatment has a significant role in the
efficiency results, and that the higher is the fluxing tem-
perature, the higher the efficiency values. These results
are in agreement with previous studies concerning the
influence of fluxing temperatures on recovery of alu-
minum from used aluminum beverage cans (Majidi et
al., 2007; Rabah, 2003).
This behavior can be explained by the fact that the
melt presents a fully different viscosity as compared to
normal casting aluminum alloys. In aluminum cans the
melt presents the formation of a stronger viscosity metal-
lic mass. It can be attributed to the presence of oxides
and other impurities solved in liquid aluminum, so the
Fig. 2. Efficiency vs. bath temperatures for different melt treatments.
mixture of the flux in melting aluminum aids the break
down of the oxides, promoting the process of metal-slag
separation (Tenório and Espinosa, 2002).
Fig. 3 shows the results of efficiency as a function
of the flux quantity. It can be observed that increases in
flux quantity leads to increases in efficiency values for
different fluxing temperatures. It can be noted that over
10 wt.% in flux amount leads to stabilization in efficiency
values despite the increase in flux quantity added to the
bath.
Regarding the influence of melt temperature, a minor
increase in efficiency results was noticed when higher
melt temperature was used. It suggests that 750 ◦ C is the
good melting temperature, resulting in energy saves and
reduction in oxidation losses.
Results indicate that it is possible to reduce the flux
level, thus reducing the environmental impact of this
recycling process.
Influence of fluxing treatment on efficiency in alu-
minum can recycling can also be observed by scrap
aspects, Fig. 4. In the experiments in which no flux was
added to the melt (Fig. 4a), a clustering of the scrap with
the presence of aluminum metal be seen, which indicates
the inefficiency of this experimental condition. As for the
use of 20 wt.% of flux (Fig. 4b), another aspect can be
seen in the scrap, here clustering of the scrap was not
observed and there was not any aluminum metal.
Results show the occurrence of great efficiency val-
ues in aluminum can recycling using fusion in induction
furnace, and that these efficiency values were higher
than those obtained in some industrial plants. Accord-
ing to the information on industrial efficiency values of
aluminum can recycling, these values are around 55%
for oil/air combustion furnaces and 60% for natural gas
combustion furnaces (Kurzawa, 2006).
The chemical composition of recycled aluminum are
shown in Table 3, the average values were presented as
 G.O. Verran, U. Kurzawa / Resources, Conservation and Recycling 52 (2008) 731–736 735

Fig. 4. Photography of the scrap: (a) no flux and (b) use of 20 wt.% of flux.

Table 3
Chemical compositions of the recycled aluminum
Element

Mn Mg Cu Si Fe Zn Cr Ti Ni Pb Al

Minimuma 0.73 0.48 0.10 0.09 0.29 0.02 0.01 0.01 0.01 0.01 97.65
Maximuma 0.78 0.88 0.14 0.16 0.40 0.05 0.06 0.02 0.04 0.02 98.09
Averagea 0.74 0.63 0.11 0.10 0.34 0.04 0.02 0.01 0.01 0.01 97.99
a wt.% evaluated by optical emission spectroscopy.

well as the minimum and maximum values of the chem- Acknowledgement

ical analysis performed in samples of all experimental
conditions investigated in this study.
These results show major changes in Mg amount,
probably due to the higher reactivity of this element at
high temperatures, and Mn amount just below expected
values for this material though the final composition are
very similar to the initial composition of the charge. Con-
taminant elements such as Ti, Pb and Cr were not found
in recycled aluminum.
4. Conclusions
• The use of induction furnace leads to greater efficiency
in aluminum can recycling compared to the use of
furnaces heated by burning of different fuels.
• The fluxing procedure in which the salt flux was
intensively mixed to the melt was more effective in
aluminum can recycling.
• The use of higher temperatures increases the effi-
ciency in aluminum can recycling.
• The combination of optimum flux procedure and melt
temperature leads to some reduction in the salt flux
amount without a significant decrease in efficiency in
aluminum can recycling.
• Recycled aluminum presents a chemical composition
just near to those.
• Expected ones.
The authors wish to thank UDESC, State University
of Santa Catarina for financial support.
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