Recycling of aluminium alloy turning scrap via cold pressing and melting with salt flux

Among the various steps of aluminium production from liquid metal, a lot of scrap is generated due to machining operations. Therefore, recycling of aluminium scrap is an interesting subject because of the broad applications of this metal and low efficiency of processes used to recycle metal scrap. In this paper, the recyclability of aluminium alloy AA 336 turnings with different cold compacting pressures and a protective salt flux (NaCl-KCl-KF) has been experimentally studied. Various categories of compacted samples were melted at 750 degrees C in molten aluminium alloy AA 336 and also in the protective salt flux to recover aluminium alloy. In order to understand the amount of recycling of different samples, weight loss measurement was applied. From recyclability stand point it is shown that using protective salt flux is the best route, from the point of view of recyclability. Mechanical properties and chemical analysis of samples were approximately the same as the primary material produced by conventional casting process. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.