Aluminum was obtained in 1825 by the Danish physicist HC Olsted using a potassium amalgam to interact with aluminum chloride to obtain an amalgam, which was then removed by distillation to obtain mercury. of.
The production of metallic aluminum was initially chemical. That is, the method of sodium chemistry established by the French scientist H. Sainte Claire Diwill in 1854 and the method of magnesium established by the Russian physical chemist HH Bekitov (Ð.Ð.Бекетов) in 1865 Chemical method. France began its industrial production by chemical methods in 1855, and it is the country that produced aluminum in the world earlier.
The discovery of bauxite (1821) was earlier than aluminum and was mistaken for a new mineral. To produce aluminum from bauxite, it is first necessary to prepare alumina and then electrowinn to obtain aluminum. The mining of bauxite began in France in 1873. The production of alumina from bauxite started in 1894, using the Bayer process, and the production scale was only over 1t per day.
By 1900, a small amount of bauxite was mined in countries such as France, Italy and the United States. The annual production was only 90,000 tons. With the development of modern industry, aluminum was applied to the aviation and military industries as metals and alloys, and then expanded to civilian industries. Since then, the aluminum industry has developed rapidly. By 1950, the output of metal aluminum in the world had reached 1.51 million tons. It increased to 20.92 million tons in 1996, becoming the second most important metal after steel.
The general prospecting work of bauxite in China began early in 1924. At that time, the Japanese scholar Benben Junxi conducted a geological survey of the loess shales in Liaoyang, Liaoning Province and Yantai, Shandong Province. Afterwards, the Japanese Jensen Yoshio et al. and Chinese scholars Wang Zhuquan, Xie Jiarong, and Chen Hongcheng successively visited aluminum in Shandong Zibo, Hebei Tangshan and Kaifeng, Shanxi Taiyuan, Xishan and Yangquan, Liaoning Benxi, and Fuzhou Bay. Geotechnical and bauxite shales have undergone special geological surveys. The investigation of bauxite in southern China began in 1940. First, Bian Zhaoxiang investigated the bauxite deposits near Banqiao Town in Kunming, Yunnan Province. Subsequently, from 1942 to 1945, Peng Qirui, Xie Jiarong, and Le Sen Wang Xun et al. conducted geological surveys and systematic sampling of bauxite and high-alumina clay deposits in Yunnan, Guizhou and Sichuan. All in all, the work before the founding of New China was mostly general surveying and investigative research.
The real geological exploration work of bauxite started after the founding of New China. From 1953 to 1955, the geological team of the Ministry of Metallurgy and the Geological Department successively took the aluminum mines in the Zibo bauxite mine in Shandong Province and the Xiaoguan area in Gongxian County, Henan Province (such as Zhulingou, Chadian, Shuitou, and Zhongling, etc.) and aluminum in the middle of Guizhou Province. Mineral exploration (such as Linxi, Xiaobaiba, Yantai, etc.), Baijiazhuang Mining Area in Yangquan, Shanxi Province, and so on were carried out. However, at that time, due to the lack of exploration experience of bauxite, and the blind use of the bauxite specifications of the former Soviet Union in combination with the actual conditions of China’s bauxite, most of the geological exploration reports were downgraded during the 1960–1962 review. , reserves have also been reduced a lot. After 1958, China accumulated a certain amount of experience in the exploration of bauxite, and on the basis of a copper-aluminum survey, it discovered and explored many mining areas. Among them, the most important ones were: Henan Zhangyaoyuan and Guangxi Pingguo. , Shanxi Xiaoyi KeRu, Zhangpu, Fujian, Hainan Penglai, and other bauxite mines.
The mining of bauxite in China started earlier in 1911. At that time, the Japanese first exploited the bauxite mine in the Fuzhou Bay, Liaoning Province, China, and then in the period from 1925 to 1941, it also used the Liaoyang, Liaoning Province, and Yantai, Shandong Province, A and G. The bauxite mine is mined and the above mining is mostly used as a refractory material. From 1941 to 1943, the Japanese carried out mining of the Tianzhuang and Hongtupo ore sections of the Hutian and Lishui mining areas of the Zibo bauxite mine in Shandong Province, and the ore was used as a raw material for aluminum smelting. Later, Taiwan Aluminum also conducted small-scale mining for aluminum.
The large-scale development and utilization of bauxite in China started from the new China. In 1954, it first restored the Shandong Surabaya mine that had been mined by the Japanese. After 1958, three major aluminum plants 501, 502, and 503 were built in Shandong, Henan, and Guizhou provinces. To meet the demand of the three major aluminum plants for bauxite, they were built in Shandong, Henan, Shanxi, and Guizhou provinces. Zhangdian Aluminum Mine, Xiaoguan Aluminum Mine, Luoyang Aluminum Mine, Xiuwen Aluminum Mine, Qingzhen Aluminum Mine, Yangquan Aluminum Mine and other aluminum ore raw material bases.
After entering the 1980s, especially after the establishment of the China Nonferrous Metals Industry Corporation in 1983, the geological exploration and aluminum industry of bauxite in China has developed rapidly, and new and expanded large-scale representatives represented by Shanxi Aluminum Plant and Zhongzhou Aluminum Plant. The aluminum plant made the output of primary aluminum in China from less than 2000 tons in 1954 to 1.87 million tons now. Established a complete set of aluminum industry system from geology, mining to smelting and processing, aluminum metal and its processed products can basically meet the needs of China's economic construction.