While aluminium has myriad industrial uses in modern life, bauxite residue does not. The slurry normally winds up in garbage dumps, takes up growing amounts of area and represents a missed recycling opportunity.
Easy numbers show the test for market and society: every tonne of aluminium produced lead to around two tonnes of bauxite residue.< The concrete stretch at the Aughinish refinery has actually a structure made from materials that include bauxite residue, which is also referred to as red mud.. A group of researchers received EU funding to help take on these 3 difficulties and developed the concept of using bauxite residue for the road at the Aughinish aluminium refinery. Their project, called RemovAL, ran for five years through April 2023.. In the western Irish city of Limerick, on the website of an aluminium refinery, a 500-metre paved roadway is constructed on an experiment that could help Europe reduce hazardous waste.. Landfilling is a practice that we want to move away from, said Dr Efthymios Balomenos, who co-led the project. Even if there is absolutely no harm to the environment, you are still consuming great deals of area and tossing away half your product.. Bauxite residue at the Queensland Alumina Limited. Credit: Aluminum.org.au. Red mud is what gets left over from the production of aluminium-- the metal that goes into whatever from cooking area foil and beer cans to electric automobiles and aircraft fuselages. Aluminium comes from bauxite, an aluminous rock formed from a reddish clay soil.. Muddy matters.