Thread: aluminium...

if i happened to have some aluminium oxide how would i get rid of the oxygen..
would i burn the aluminium oxide with carbon to make carbon dioxide and aluminium and is this reaction called a deduction reaction.

Originally Posted by rhysboi1991

if i happened to have some aluminium oxide how would i get rid of the oxygen..
would i burn the aluminium oxide with carbon to make carbon dioxide and aluminium and is this reaction called a deduction reaction.

I don't see how that would work, aluminium oxide is converted to aluminum through industrial electolysis. I'm not a chemist so maybe someone else may be able to tell you if that reaction is possible.

it just that i didnt know whether it was done by electrolysis or can be done using carbon and would like to know if it was possible using the carbon method i explained

That would be a reduction (not a deduction) if it were chemically feasible, but Wikipedia will tell you this:

For example, direct reduction with carbon, as is used to produce iron, is not chemically possible, since aluminium is a stronger reducing agent than carbon.

You cannot recover aluminum from aluminum oxide by simple chemical reaction. It is simply too stable. Trying to burn it with carbon will simply burn the carbon while leaving the aluminum oxide unchanged.

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ok thank you people

yeh you have to look at the reactivity series to find how to get a metal from its oxide.
those that are less reactive than carbon can just be burned in carbon, hence iron is obtained via the blast furnace.
but for those metals more reactive than carbon you need other methods, electrolysis for aluminium.
bauxite the main ore of aluminium. it is dissolved in molten cryolite.
next you apply the electrodes. and aluminium collects at the cathode
Al3+ +3e- ------> Al
and robert's your mother's brother

sorry for the lack of subscript and superscript, don't know how to do that

and besides if it was as simple as burning bauxite in carbon dioxid, they would of used aluminium long before electrolysis was possible, its still a relatively new material, if you look at others such as iron.. bronze etc

I guess u want to perform THERMITE reaction ! :wink:

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