Acidic Reaction of Waste Aluminum Foil for Alumina Production

Abstract

Batch experiments were performed in order to evaluate the most effective conditions of reaction between aluminum foil waste and hydrochloric acid using a statistical model based on 23 full factorial design. The three factors investigated were aluminum foil waste particle size, aluminum foil to acid solution ratio, and acid solution concentration. The optimization of the factors to obtain maximum conversion was carried out by incorporating surface plots. A first order model was elaborated and indicated that the maximum observed conversion reaches 97.6% compared with 95.69% calculated conversion under the following conditions: solid to liquid ratio of 0.0127 g foil/g HCl solution, aluminum foil particle size of 10 mm and 2 M acid concentration. XRF showed that the obtained alumina has a purity of 90.13% by weight.