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Auto manufacturers have ambitious sustainability targets in addition to the desire to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. They want to know they are sourcing the most sustainable products for today’s green consumer. This means that the aluminium industry must, for example, learn how to increase the recycled content in automotive alloys to help car companies meet their own recycling objectives. Buying-back the offcuts from the automakers’ sheet metal stamping process is one key way of closing the recycling loop.

The global aluminium market will be more or less balanced in 2013, with most of the production and demand growth this year to come from China, a senior executive at US producer Alcoa Inc said.

Belski gave a very bullish outlook for the automotives industry, and pointed to the “revitalisation” of the aviation industry, growth in the packaging and construction sectors, and the modernisation of power network infrastructure as other drivers of this growth.

Strengthening a record number (98) of the company's main power distribution lines. Replacing thousands of distribution utility poles with stronger ones - most of them concrete - designed to withstand hurricane-force wind gusts of 130 mph or more. Installing additional smart grid technology to better detect and address power outages, and adding improved lightning protection equipment. Upgrading FPL's power transmission system. Replacing wood poles with concrete structures and upgrading associated hardware. Installing new flood monitoring systems at select power substations that are most susceptible to possible flooding and storm surge.

A bare copper equipment grounding conductor should not be placed in an aluminum cable tray due to the potential for electrolytic corrosion of the aluminum cable tray in a moist environment. For such installations, it is best to use an insulated conductor and to remove the insulation where bonding connections are made to the cable tray, raceways, equipment enclosures, etc. with tin or zinc plated connectors.

Highlights•Al/Cu composite wires exhibit three intermetallic compounds whatever the annealing.•Al/Cu intermetallics are formerly identified by TEM and XRD analysis.•Intragranular diffusion and grain boundaries short-circuits operate simultaneously.•Effective heat of formation model explains the stability of the three intermetallics.

Copper ranks second to silver as an electrical conductor. The copper cladding of LEONI Histral® H16 ensures a good electrical conductivity whenever mechanical properties do not play a primary role.

High-frequency (HF) technology In HF technology the so-called „skin effect“ ensures that the current flow is restricted to a very thin layer situated on the surface of the conductor and that the overall resistance in the conductor is reduced. LEONI Histral® H16 has copper, which features good electrical, in the cladding only. The additional galvanic plating of the surface causes the skin effect to be optimized. Aeronautics and automotive technology Weight is of major importance for the construction of airplanes and automobiles. LEONI Histral® H16 is particularly suited for larger cross-sections here that can be employed for the transmission of power, where there is a significant weight reduction potential. Shielding braids LEONI Histral® H16 features a resistivity lending itself well to shielding braids because high coverage can be achieved at a comparatively low weight. The fact that aluminum suffers from the drawback of having a poor contact resistance is largely offset by the copper cladding. Heating applications The combination of a relatively good resistance value with a rather low mechanical resilience suggest that LEONI Histral® H16 may well be used in all kinds of heating applications that are not exposed to a permanently varying level of stress.

As cable harnesses are already among the most complex and heaviest components used in vehicles, any possibility for weight savings is an attractive proposition. A model calculation of realistic weight-saving potential was analyzed in an average mid-size car with a cable harness weighing just under 30 kilograms. For the substitution of Al wire for Cu conductors, exclusively larger cross-sections (>0.75 mm²) were analyzed, excluding the fine-signal conductors. Al conductors with the next-highest cross-section replaced the affected Cu conductors. Under these conditions, a purely computational weight savings of around 7kg was initially achieved. However, for the last decade in Germany, the solid battery terminals were already made of Al, so the actual potential for savings in this particular case study is 2-3kg per cable harness.

Aluminium versus Kupfer

Beijing has come up with a list of aluminium smelters in China that meet prescribed standards, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

Christophe Allain, the Corporate Purchasing Director for non-ferrous metals at Nexans, acknowledged to an assembly at the Cesco copper conference in Chile how the changes have altered his company.