Modeling of Alternative Compositions of Recycled Wrought Aluminum Alloys

Nowadays, a significant part of postconsumed wrought aluminum scrap is still used for the production of comparatively cheaper cast alloys, in that way losing an important part of the potential added value. The share of postconsumed scrap in wrought aluminum alloys could be increased either by sorting to fractions with the required chemical composition and/or by broadening the standard compositional tolerance limits of alloying elements. The first solution requires hand or automatic sorting of postconsumed scrap as alloys or groups of alloys to the degree of separation sufficient to enable the blending of standard compositions of wrought alloys; the second solution is much more radical, predicting changes in the existing standards for wrought aluminum alloys toward nonstandard alloys but yet having properties acceptable for customers. In this case, the degree of separation of incoming postconsumed scrap required is much less demanding. The model presented in this work enables the design of optimal (standard and nonstandard recycling-friendly) compositions and properties of wrought aluminum alloys with significantly increased amounts of postconsumed scrap. The following two routes were modeled in detail: (I) the blending of standard and nonstandard compositions of wrought aluminum alloys starting from postconsumed aluminum scrap sorted to various degrees simulated by the model and (II) changing the initial standard composition of wrought aluminum alloys to nonstandard “recycling-friendly” ones, with broader concentration tolerance limits of alloying elements and without influencing the selected alloy properties, specified in advance. The applied algorithms were found to be very useful in the industrial design of both procedures: (I) the computation of the required chemical composition of the scrap streams obtained by sorting (or, in other words, the postconsumed scrap sorting level), necessary for achieving the standard wrought alloy composition and (II) the transformation of standard to nonstandard (recycling-friendly) compositions with the key alloy properties (e.g., tensile strength and elongation) remaining the same.