Note: For best quality, please read off of a computer.

So, how did you get here Mr. Pop?

I'm mainly composed of a material called aluminum. Aluminum is:

• -Ductile
• -Malleable
• -Reflective
• -Lightweight
• -Has a high resistance to corrosion
• -Can be recycled

However, aluminum does not occur in pure form. It’s mined from an ore called bauxite.

Although bauxite isn’t mined in Canada, it is mined in other countries such as Jamaica, Guinea, Brazil, and Australia, by Canadian company Rio Tinto Alcan.

After bauxite is extracted from open pit mines, how do they get aluminum out of it?

The bauxite then goes through the Bayer process.

Crushing and Grinding

Bauxite is crushed into smaller, more workable sized pieces using large grinders.

Fact! It takes 4 tons of bauxite to produce 2 tons of alumina and 2 tons of alumina to produce 1 ton of aluminum!

Dissolving

As the grinding mill continues to rotate, the bauxite is mixed with a chemical called caustic soda and dissolved at high temperatures and pressure.

Filtration

The mixture, which has now turned into something called a slurry, then has to be filtered to remove any undissolved impurities called "red mud".

Settling

The mixture is then left in settling tanks where gravity helps separate components of the mixture.

Precipitation

After being filtered, the remaining alumina solution is transported to tall tanks called precipitators. Here, aluminum hydroxide seeds stimulate precipitation of solid aluminum hydroxide crystals.

Calcination

The alumina hydrate is then heated in calcination kilns where all excess water is removed.

Result

After the process is complete, we’re left with a fine, white powder called alumina or aluminum oxide. Alumina can then be shipped to Canadian smelters in BC and various parts of Quebec such as:

Fact! Quebec is home to 8 out of 9 aluminum smelters in Canada.

Recap:

Cool! What happens next?

Once transported, alumina has to be smelted into aluminum through the Hall-Héroult process.

This process uses electrolysis to extract aluminum from a liquid mixture.

Since the melting point of aluminum oxide is nearly 2000°C, companies dissolve aluminum oxide in molten cryolite which lowers the melting point to 900°C.

After the alumina dissolves, we’re left with a liquid mixture of molten aluminum oxide and molten cryolite. We can now begin the process of electrolysis.

It all happens in a carbon lined reduction pot.

As electricity runs through pot, positive aluminum ions are attracted to negative cathode and sink to bottom of tank to be collected.

Negative oxygen ions are attracted to positive electrodes. Oxygen forms at anodes and reacts with carbon in the rods to create carbon dioxide (CO2).

Cool! We finally made pure aluminum! What happens to it now?

Allow me to explain!

The aluminum is then placed into a holding furnace and cast into ingots to be shipped to factories.

Aluminum used to make pop cans is rolled out into long, thin sheets and sent to factories as 20 000 pound aluminum coils.

Fact! Each coil of aluminum will make around 700 000 cans!

Once coil is loaded, a punch press forces metal through dies, forming shallow cups.

Next, a punch forces each cup through a series of dies that decrease in size, creating body of can.

After that, cans are washed, dried, stacked and transported to another factory to be filled, sealed, and labelled, before being sent out to stores.

Is that it? Is that all there is to a pop can’s life?

Not quite. If my consumer remembers to recycle me, I can be given a whole new life! It's called secondary production.

Unlike primary production, secondary production reuses previously produced materials. such as recycled products.

When you recycle pop cans, they’re sent back to a recycling plant where they’re reformed to make more aluminum products, whether it's more pop cans or something else.