New Aluminum Alloy Could Transform Vehicle Scrap into a Manufacturing Advantage
A new alloy could turn tomorrow’s vehicle scrap into america’s next manufacturing advantage.
A large influx of aluminum auto body scrap is expected to move through recycling systems over the next ten years. Much of this material contains too many impurities to be reused safely in high-performance automotive components, which considerably reduces its value.
Researchers at the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Oak ridge National laboratory (ORNL) have now developed a solution: a new aluminum alloy known as RidgeAlloy. This alloy allows low-grade scrap to be converted into material suitable for producing strong,reliable structural vehicle parts,creating a valuable domestic supply chain.
Aluminum appears on the DOE’s critical materials list because it plays a key role in technologies that generate,transport,store,and conserve energy.
RidgeAlloy is created by melting down post-consumer aluminum scrap and recasting it into a formulation that meets industry standards for strength,ductility,and crash performance. ORNL’s long-standing leadership in aluminum alloy research enabled the team to use a focused design strategy that sped up development.
“The team advanced from a paper concept to a triumphant, full-scale part demonstration of a new alloy in only 15 months,” said Allen Haynes, director of ORNL’s Light Metals Core Program. “That’s an unheard-of pace of innovation in developing complex structural alloys.”
The challenge of repurposing vehicle scrap aluminum
Aluminum-heavy vehicles began entering the U.S. market around 2015, with Ford’s F-150 among the earliest to be widely produced. By the early 2030s, many of thes vehicles will reach the end of their lifespan, generating as much as 350,000 tons of aluminum body sheet scrap each year in North America. Instead of returning as high-value material, much of this scrap is expected to be downgraded into low-grade castings or shipped overseas, representing a lost possibility for domestic manufacturing.
“You can repurpose post-consumer aluminum into something non-structural like engine blocks,” said Alex Plotkowski, ORNL group leader of Computational Coupled Physics. “But it won’t have the properties needed for higher value, structurally sound body applications.”
New Aluminum Alloy, RidgeAlloy, Promises Enduring Future for Automotive Manufacturing
Oak Ridge, TN – Researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) have developed a new aluminum alloy, dubbed RidgeAlloy, that enables the creation of high-strength, lightweight structural castings using significantly higher percentages of recycled aluminum. This breakthrough has the potential to dramatically reshape automotive manufacturing, reduce energy consumption, and bolster domestic supply chains.
RidgeAlloy, composed of aluminum, magnesium, silicon, iron, and manganese, has been successfully tested using high-pressure die-casting. Initial tests focused on a medium-sized, moderately complex part, with the long-term goal of scaling up to larger components, including potential “giga-castings” used in automotive production. https://scitechdaily.com/ridgealloy-aluminum-alloy-automotive-recycling/
“The cast parts confirmed that RidgeAlloy had the combination of properties necessary for structural vehicle castings, even when made from recycled blends with higher iron and silicon content,” said Alex Plotkowski of ORNL.The alloy delivers strength, corrosion resistance, and ductility, making it suitable for underbodies, frame components, and other critical automotive parts.
This is especially notable as it allows for the effective reuse of post-consumer aluminum scrap, a growing resource as more vehicles reach the end of their lifespan.Currently,the sorting and reuse of automotive aluminum body sheet scrap presents challenges. RidgeAlloy offers a solution to recapture the value from this material stream.
According to Allen Haynes of ORNL, the research team leveraged the laboratory’s advanced capabilities to address a critical gap in understanding lightweight automotive materials. “This team figured out how to take full advantage of a national lab’s world-class suite of capabilities to rapidly fill a huge gap in our understanding of lightweight automotive materials,” Haynes stated.
The potential impact of RidgeAlloy is significant. Researchers estimate that by the early 2030s, the alloy could enable recycled structural castings at volumes equal to at least half of the annual primary aluminum production in the U.S. https://scitechdaily.com/ridgealloy-aluminum-alloy-automotive-recycling/ This would lead to significant reductions in energy use and costs, while concurrently strengthening domestic supply chains.
“ridgealloy offers the first technology capable of recapturing the value of a fast-approaching and historically massive wave of domestic, high-quality recycled automotive aluminum sheet alloys,” Haynes explained. “That’s the big picture supply chain impact our team aimed for.”
beyond automotive applications, RidgeAlloy also shows promise in industrial machinery, agricultural equipment, aerospace, mobile power generation, off-road vehicles (snowmobiles, motorcycles), and marine vehicles (jet skis).
The research was funded by the Department of Energy’s (DOE) office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Vehicle Technologies Office Lightweight Metals Core Program. https://scitechdaily.com/ridgealloy-aluminum-alloy-automotive-recycling/
The ORNL project team included Alex Plotkowski, Amit Shyam, Allen haynes, Sunyong Kwon, Ying Yang, Sumit Bahl, Nick Richter, Severine Cambier, Alice Perrin, and Gerry Knapp.