[boffinAudio]

Whats crazy is that a significant portion of the aluminium minerals comes from a single source of bauxite in the world, near Pinjarra Western Australia .. something like 90% of the worlds aluminium is sourced from that one mine.

[atombender]

According this source [1], only about 35% of all bauxite is mined in Australia, so I don't think that's true.

What's crazy is how modern shipping has made it economical to process this elsewhere, all over the globe. For example, from one of the biggest bauxite mines, in Pará, Brazil, the raw bauxite is shipped across the Atlantic to be processed by Hydro in Norway, which refines it into alumina powder, which is then shipped elsewhere to be refined into aluminum. You would think it would be more cost-effective and energy-efficient to centralize this, not to mention more environmentally friendly.

[1] https://www.nsenergybusiness.com/news/profiling-the-top-five...

[cjs_ac]

Extracting aluminium from bauxite is notoriously energy-intensive. During the nineteenth century, European aristocrats used aluminium tableware because it was more expensive than silverware. (They later switched back to silver when the novelty wore off and they realised aluminium was too light to feel right in the hand.)

[at_a_remove]

And you get all of that energy back when you powder that aluminium, mix it with rust, and manage (with difficulty) to ignite it.

[throwawaymobule]

No you don't. There are losses from inefficiency at every step.

[zdragnar]

I took a small rabbit hole run into bauxite smelting when I found out a local place had their own power plant just for the process. It really does require that much energy.

If the Brazil plant is putting out enough ore, I can definitely imagine it is cheaper to sell it internationally to someone with hydro power than to build and operate their own power plant.

[boffinAudio]

Yeah, I think this factoid has changed significantly in the decades since I learned it during a visit to Pinjarra. ;)

Still, bauxite is pretty weird business.