2.6 Getting bauxite from soda cans
A typical bauxite ore is 50% Al2O3. Remember, Al has an atomic mass of 27, O is 16, so bauxite is 26.5% Al. Using this information, see if you can complete the activity below. Again, don't worry if you have some difficulty with this – it takes some practice.
Activity 2.1 Extracting Al from bauxite
How much bauxite do you need to make a 15 g soda can?
Answer
The answer is 56.7 g bauxite:
50% bauxite is 50% Al2O3.
So it’s around four times more efficient to use bauxite as a source of Al than a typical igneous rock like granite – and that’s because the geological process, in this case weathering, does a lot of the work for us.
OpenLearn - An Introduction to Geology
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