Bauxite is the ore from which aluminum is refined. Bauxite is a product of tropical weathering of rocks. With the increasing demand for aluminium for the electrical industry, structural fabrication and aircraft manufacture, the demand for bauxite has increased. Bauxite generally has low aluminium content. The first stage in processing bauxite is to remove impurities like iron and silica and produce alumina. The next stage is smelting of alumina to aluminium metal by electrolysis. This needs large quantity of electric power. Hence smelter is located in places having abundance supply of cheap electricity such as hydroelectric power stations.
The following four are the natural compounds of aluminium.
(a) Cryolite is a double fluoride of aluminium and soda. The west coast of Greenland is the only place where it is found in large quantities.
(b) Corundum is a native alumina (A1203) i.e., aluminium oxide. It is used as an abrasive.
(c) Kaolin - the alumina content being too low and silicate content being too high it is not used in aluminium extraction.
(d) Bauxite - It is the ore containing hydrated aluminium oxide as a important mineral and this is the only source from which aluminium is extracted commercially. Commercial bauxite should contain at least 50 p.c. alumina (A1203) and less than 7 p.c. silica. Tropical climates favor the formation of bauxite.
Hungary, China, and French West Africa contain a considerable quantity of bauxite reserves of 150 million metric tons, 150 million metric tons, 100 million metric tons respectively. Ghana has 80 million, France 50 million, Brazil 40 million, and U.SA 35 million metric tons of bauxite reserves.
World production of bauxite amounted to 40 million metric tons in 1988. France and U.S.A have long been the leading producers of bauxite. Bauxite ore production in France and U.S.A amounted to 3 million and 2 million metric tons in 1985. Jamaica and Surinam produced 8 and 4.6 million metric tons respectively in 1988. Other producing countries are Yugoslavia, Italy, Indonesia, India and Spain.
Aluminium Production. Canada, Norway and Japan have cheap electricity and they have many smelters producing aluminium. In Britain, France and Germany, there are aluminium smelters using imported bauxite or alumina.
The world's leading producers of aluminium are different from bauxite producers. Though world production of bauxite was 99 million tons in 1985, aluminium production amount to 16.9 million tons. The United States is the largest producer with 23% of the world total. Russia, Canada, Australia, Germany and Norway are other producers of aluminium. The locational pattern of aluminium production is dependent on the availability of abundance of power and not the local mining of bauxite ore. Canada, Australia and Norway export aluminium.
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