Massive Dross Melt - Recovering Aluminum From Dross From My Massive Can Meltdown Video of 8,405 Cans
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 12 ต.ค. 2022
- I melted down all the dross from my massive can meltdown video where I melted down 8,405 aluminum cans. The massive aluminum can meltdown was a giant in itself... Melting all the dross from it was also a pretty big task to tackle. It took me about 10 hours and almost 3 tanks of propane, but I recovered a pretty good amount from the massive amount of dross that I had. Although it was a beast to make and edit, I had a lot of fun making this one. I hope you enjoy watching it!
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Melting aluminum dross is about as fun as melting aluminum cans… It took me about 10 hours and 3 tanks of propane but I got through it. I hope you all enjoy watching this one as much as I did making it! Oh, and if the 3D printed death figures don’t make sense, check out my massive can meltdown 8,000+ can melt and it will 😉 There’s a link to it at the end. I hope you enjoy this one and I’ll see all you awesome people next time 👍
I did indeed enjoy it. Thank you very much for all the effort.
Although I think I enjoyed watching way more than you did making, that had to be tedious. And could tell you were sweating with the drops hitting the concrete.
Wow! This is my new favorite smelting channel! Best I've found. Can't wait to see what you make with all of that!
You should get Lego like casting molds so your bars interlock when they stack
Would it not be cheaper to use induction to melt it?
@@blakethefoxxo5162 how would that work?
5 sides get formed, but how to get the last side formed?
Closing the mold up with another plate or something?
It would be an interesting experiment to run that leftover dross through a crusher and then try to separate out a metal concentrate on a shaker table. That would strip out most of the dirt and oxides and leave you one or two crucibles full of cons to melt a third time.
I was going to suggest the same, albeit, before doing the first melt of the slag.
What we need is some sort of forge with holes in the bottom so you can heat up the slag and just let the aluminum drip down out of it.
@@seanfoltz7645 You'll need flux to be well mixed with the dross, your method will allow to skip the shaker table sorting at the cost of more material to soak up the heat and thus more gas used to melt.
tl;dr it's better to use a rockbutcher's method than yours in all circumstances except for simplicity.
🤔🤔🤔🤓
Search Wikipedia for “aluminum dross”.
Ive been thinking of maybe reclaiming the dross with electrolysis. Its aluminum oxide? Maybe we can make aluminium hydroxide? Then its easier to rip the oxygen off.
Man, that shelf at the end holding on for dear life lol.😂
2:11 while it may be a mix of sodium chloride and potassium chloride, what you want is a perfect mixture that gives you a eutectic when you melt them together, which should be molar 50:50. Make little pucks from the molten salt, in two-bite brownie trays. When using a puck, it needs to melt with your dross to drive off any residual water. It acts as a flux to help separate aluminum from the oxides. The melting point of each salt is higher than aluminum, so we use the eutectic salt instead.
him: “someone needs to go on a diet!”
also him: *lifts 83lbs like it’s air*
you can be strong and fat at the same time
Butterbean: I took that personally.
Diet and exercise are two different things i suppose
@@levistoner lol :)))
If that initial bit of salt is all you added, you might as well not have bothered. The point of the salt is that it provides a liquid phase that will dissolve the powdery aluminium oxides; thus allowing small metal droplets to coalesce rather than staying trapped in non-molten oxides. Not sure about the optimal ratios, but youll be consuming salt in proportion to the amount of oxides you are trying to remove. It seemed to me your initial salted batch also left almost no metal behind, while the yield of later batches went down.
I have to admit, I never thought you would get that much aluminuim out of that !! I am happy to see you did though !! The way you had the ingots laid out looked exactly like Tetris lol Another great video, thanks for sharing !!
Thank you Lisa! So good to hear from you. I hope you’re doing well and I need to message you and catch up soon! Love ya! 🙂
I would've never guessed you could get so much metal from the dross.
Definitely makes me rethink why I've been hoarding all the cans to melt when I get my forge, instead of just turning them in and using larger scraps to melt, lol
that's something I have always wondered ... why dont refineries store their dross and remelt it as they go along ... eventually they will get every last drop out of it ... and of course with raw minerals sort for all the ores and minerals you can sell ... split them out sure you might be primary aluminium ... but there is a wide range of other metals in the same zone as well ... all worth money ... and since your getting one may as well get em all and increase the profits ... eventually you will end up with basic carbon once you have processed everything out of it possible ... and then you now have a source of safe carbon to sell off as well ...
@@kaboom-zf2bl they probably pass them through a ball mill and let it settle
@@kaboom-zf2bl the problem is energy costs- eventually the cost of melting the dross and adding flux will get to a point that it costs more to do than you could profit. Maybe if we valued efficiency and waste reduction instead of profit we could get it all out.
He's not melting dross to get more metal out of it. You can't re-use dross - It's worthless oxides. Not sure exactly what you guys think is happening here.
@@bridgetshepherd5202 I'm sure we will one day my friend. 😊🌎✨
I like watching you get almost all of the aluminum out. You sure made a lot of aluminum squares. That will come in handy for all of your upcoming melts! And don't worry, muscle weighs more than fat. 😀
Thank you as always Tracy! It was a lot of aluminum to get through. And I hope you’re right, but I need to get my
pre-TheGrowingStack figure back 😃😉
@@TheGrowingStack Ok. If you REALLY want to. We don't mind tho. We like you just as you are!!!
And I bet it was a ton of work. And I bet you had fun too. I bet you always do, working on your hobby. ☺️
That middle shelf makes me nervous, that’s a lot of weight and that shelf is bowing. Great video!
A good tip: use flux to get the most metal out of the dross. Best one to get metal from dross is mixture 1:1 of potassium chloride and sodium chloride (salt). but there are "secret" flux mixtures available which do better and go faster but are more expensive. Using flux saves on the carburant use
2:06
The problem is, unless you buy the flux by the ton, it would probably cost more than the additional aluminum recovered.
@@buggsy5 indeed. I'm wrong for aluminum as I know this for gold. But nevertheless, don't forget the ton of fun you'll have :-)
Look at how much metal is being reused/recycled by just one guy’s hobby. Excellent
me, an absolute sicko: ok now do it again with whats left >:)
lol but seriously really awesome to see this! looked like so much work, we are all grateful
Need nobody say otherwise
DC...The Official shoes of the backyard foundry. Love your videos.
Been watching BigstackD for years, good to see another channel with the same stuff, can never get too much!!
Great video as always.
I love how you slap Death away from your mold. It's hilarious.
11:22 If you get more aluminum blocks you could make the garage floor in the aluminum wishbone pattern 😂
Those ingots sliding out of the cast cleanly are so satisfying
Is it weird that my fave part of melt vids is watching the dross get scooped out ? This is an awesome video!
Not at all, someone else told me that was their favorite part on another video when I didn’t film myself scooping it out and disappointed them 🙂
Aluminum pavers looks like it would be cool as hell
This was a fun watch and honestly kudos to you for persevering, I would have bailed very early on!
Salt does work really well it doesn't take much. When we tested with it we settled on ~1/2tsp in a #6 and that was about right. We found using any more was excessive and caused pores to form where the salt had distributed into large globules, even with vigorous stirring. They also bubbled when you put them in water which was interesting but exposed further surface pitting. In the case of aluminum I think the chloride bonds to absorbed hydrogen to liberate it from the melt.
I love the info Gryyphyn! I have melted some small amounts of dross before but nothing like this. I learned a lot and thank you for all the info, I definitely appreciate it! 👍
I use 50/50 kosher salt and sodium-free salt substitute (potassium chloride).
@@tyttuut exactly, that’s basically the eutectic melting temp ratio, so it’s liquid at lower temperatures!
@@tyttuut @The Tyttuutface Oh, that makes way more sense. I'll have to try it out. We just use non-iodized salt. Works pretty well but I think your recipe may have better chemistry. What quantity do you use? Do you guess or go by volume/weight?
@@gryyphyn8639 I just use a bunch of it, probably a couple tablespoons for a 12kg crucible. I haven't made much of an attempt to figure out how much is actually enough or if using too much is harmful.
When in doubt, add more flux.
You still have a lot of aluminum left in there. I would do another melt. Keep plenty of flux on it. Skim off only the very top and keep adding more. Keep the crucible full until time to pour another ingot. Then set aside the last few skims down near the molten Al to return to the crucible after you pour. The idea is to only discard dross with minimal free aluminum in it. Aluminum rich dross goes back in the crucible. Keep feeding it flux. let the good stuff settle out and the ash all rise to the top where you only remove the top, the dry part.
Gas gets expensive! If you run a natural gas line back to your foundry and use a natural gas regulator and bigger orifices, you can keep your costs down a bit. But even cheaper is to make a waste oil burner. Save your old engine oil and your old cooking oil and rendered fat. There are a LOT of BTU's in a jug of used oil or grease! Same with engine oil. Rig a chimney to get the exhaust above your head so you don't breathe it. Use forced draft so you get good combustion and little residue. An oil burner is fairly simple to make if you weld. If not, still can be done.
Don't get too medieval about buffing your ingots to a high luster. The surface oxides are a protective layer against further oxidation.
Love your determination, thanks for taking us along 👍🏼
This one is better than last week and last week was your best ever! You are killing it! Well done!! I get you can't do this every week, but people like big melts. Very cool!
I think you need to use a little cryolite in the flux. sodium aluminum floride. use more flux it will prevent oxidization and help the metal to clump together.
Thanks Reginald! I’ll check it out for sure 👍
@@TheGrowingStack it's the flux used for starting an aluminum electrolytic bath. Can dissolve the oxides when hot enough. Fluorides are nasty stuff.
That’s unbelievable how much you can get out of all that. Impressive melt, and the salt added to your fire.
You weren’t kidding about a lot of recoverable metals in the dross! Good video!
I think it might be time to get a bigger tier foundry, something more propane efficient and can melt more at once. Maybe some bigger moulds too
Leave the mold on top of the furnace between pours. Not only will it ensure there's no moisture, the ingots will have a cleaner finish. They'll just take a bit longer to go off. I know the finish isn't that important but a smooth ingot with less cooling dip is always nice to look at.
Wait until you have enough gold to pour your first gold bar, you'll lose your mind 😁
corundum adds "fiber" to my refractory cement. It helps keep things together when the walls start melting.
I feel like I've been officially called out. I might be losing weight, but I'm still just slightly under you holding a trashcan of dross while you're worried about your diet for only being 195 lol
certainly difficult to justify the time/effort/resources, but the concept is still cool.
one day a hobbyist has to come along and create the monster 55 gallon drum melter foundry (gonna search to see if it's been made already now that I think about it)
As far as I can do math and google.
The propane to aluminum alone is a loss, if you add time that's just a huge deficit.
@@gzer0o783 yea. This aluminum is only at about $1 per pound. He only has $16 of value for all that work and propane used in this video.
It looks like the first couple scoops of each crucible had barely any aluminum. When you got down to the layer next to the liquid you stared getting aluminum in the scoops with the dross, very similar to a normal scrap melt. You should try separating those last few scoops and either start the next crucible with them or run one or two more crucibles at the end with just those scoops. Basically the trash pile is only the stuff off of the very top that barely has any aluminum.
75 years later, this guy will not only refine his stacks for the 3rd time, but will also refine all his dross to usable metal with little remaining leftover dross
I truly and thoroughly enjoy your videos...They're amazingly relaxing to watch! Considering how annoying it is to pick up all those lumps of dross by hand, though, have you considered getting an ash shovel? Like one that'd be used with a wood-burning furnace, or fireplace? Some of the older ones have a fairly narrow, long pan, and a good amount of length to the handle that'd make for less bending during a job such as this.
I'm amazed how much you got from what looked like junk.
A lot more came out of the dross than I would have guessed.
I am amazed how much AL you got from the slag. That salt trick really worked.
I wonder if pulverising the dross before re-melting might help in separating the metal constituent from the non-metal that will then naturally float to the top being lighter in weight? Adding flux is a good idea. The only down-side is that it adds to the dross once it's spent.
I thought about grinding it all up before melting but time got the best of me. I’m curious how that outcome would have resulted in recoverable aluminum though 👍
You are real pro. Just starting out myself at almost 58 learned a great deal from you. I like the way you operate thank you.
I get a chill up my spine at some of the shots of glowing red hot goop
I'm not going to lie. Those DC shoes are fire
Love the videos! You should do some fire ant hill casting!
Good use of the oil filter pliers there
Crazy to see what “would’ve been” thrown away.
Since most of that dross is guaranteed to be aluminum oxide, and that comes from heating the metal in an environment w/ oxygen, the best way to get rid of the dross is not to generate it in the 1st place. Crushing the cans as tightly as possible, using a flux to cover the cans at the start, keeping a lid on the crucible to exclude O2 from the melt as much as possible between additions of more crushed can "ore" should cut down on waste production. Since you can't refine aluminum from bauxite originally w/o cryolite, I'd see if that can be used safely as a flux by the hobbyist as a 1st step.
Sweet recovery buddy!
I would love to do a melt like that!
Great stackin! Keep it up!
Thanx for a great vid!
That’s a lot of dross. Great recovery of good metal. Awesome video 👍
It's amazing how many more bars you got from that slag....
Ahhh, yes. Grandma’s old recipe: home-souped cans.
Great video! Love the color changing death cameo lol
Thanks brother!!!!!
Finally someone's using the correct terminology for it, not slag.
a nice recovery from all that dross looks better on the shelf than in the garbage can
Now THATS a hobby I could get into!
Very cool !
I suppose the obvious question is, does the reclaimed aluminum equal the cost of the fuel used to melt it down?
How about if you factor in the 10 hours of time, at say minimum wage?
I'm sure this has been asked a million time before, but this is new to me.
It never does, even in the original can meltdown. The price of gas alone is a multiple of the value of the aluminum bars if sold on the market. So it's only justifiable as a hobby...
I think if you pre heat the mold before pouring, it will be a more evenly shaped ingot
I appreciate your unique Metal intros. \w/ \w/
Thank you my friend! A lot of work goes into them! 🤘
this intro goes unfathomably hard.
Got any friends who do amature masonry? They would probably love all that fly ash you produced.
All I can say is WOW!!! That was a bit of recovery.
I still think you could get away with moving to waste oil. Restaurant vegetable oil works best, but used automotive oil works too. The process is significantly cheaper and you don't get that Tank backache...lol still working on my Stack, Didn't even think about using Salt as a flux. Look's like that really worked well for you.
Lots of work and as long as you're having a good time, that's about all that matters. I know I had fun watching...lol
Great Video Bro!!! The stack looks AWESOME!!!!
Thank you Don L!! I’m going to look into waste oil, I want to do some research on what setup is involved. I love your feedback! 👍👊
New subscriber here. Great video here sir. The video where you melted the 1000+ cans was also great.
A waste oil burner would alleviate some of that propane usage. Lots of folks are melting aluminum with it. I'm guessing you live more in the city though and at first lighting it starts out a bit smokey
Nice recovery! Do you think the salt worked to separate the impurities?
I have to say gold is expensive + your videos with the liquid aluminum is so satisfying to watch as it goes from molten aluminum to a dry ingot😊
yea moisture is rlly bad when working with molten metals. i heard a story from my shop teacher about some kid spit in the the furnace when it had molten alluminum and it splashed all over and got on his shoes. he took off the shoes in time but still
NGL i kinda wanna see all those ingots melted down into one massive ingot
WOOT, I suggested this on that 8000+ can video ! :D
I wonder if a larger crucible would reduce waste material when doing larger batches or if it would be pretty much the same.
I JUST realized what you used to pick up those blocks. LOL
I wonder if keeping the wok with the next batch of dross/slag over the top of the burner to keep them warm using the exhaust gasses, would result in a faster/easier melt? The idea I had in my head was a ring that would attach to the lid, and it would be far enough away to not melt from the exhaust port.
That was a lot of aluminum recovered from just dross. Never thought there was that much aluminum left in there. That’s crazy😄👍
Not attacking TGS - just complaining about melting cans.
This is why I don't do cans anymore unless I'm desperate - you pulled all of that aluminum out of the dross and still had another pound or three left in it. That was $10-12 worth of aluminum and I'm paying just shy of $20 for a refill in my area - for $60 and ten hours of my time I'll just buy a bunch of rims.
Watching you is like fishing it's very relaxing. Thank you.❤🎉
Now you can make a bit of cash from the remaining dross after all it's aluminium oxide a superb abrasive and can be used in grit blasting.
Brilliant video, many thanks for making it.
Love your vids! Thanks for the bars a while ago!
Good to hear from you my friend!! How have you been? I hope you’re doing good!!! 👍
omg. Fill up the mould! you stop so early it's killing me :) ps love to watch your videos Also, i burned the crud out of myself because I wasn't wearing thick shoes, so just watch for that.
Also, it does not hurt to leave some melt in the crucible, rather than pour it all. It actually speeds up the subsequent melt.
Strangely compelling 😎👏🏻👏🏻
You certainly have patience. Nice video.
You know you wanna melt the dross' dross, and then the dross' dross' dross. There's gotta be nothing left but carbon, eventually.
I reckon most of that dross is aluminium oxide. Very difficult to refine into aluminium.
If you have an oxy-acetylene torch and it is aluminium oxide then melting it over 2000'C could well produce sapphire.
This guy is going to be the Jeff Bezos of bartering when civilization collapses.
Just Found the channel. I'm curious as to what the start up costs are with this? Not necessarily the cans or materials smelted, but the equipment costs. Also, is there anything in particular you do with your materials after use, or just collect? I'm astronomically stoked to have found this channel!
me too I want to know
You can get a forge off Amazon, most tools included, for around $150. Now, saying that, there are molds, protective equipment, gas, etc as additional costs, but you can get a starter set with a 6kg crucible for that price.
Great video! I have a lot of slack to melt as well.. ;-))
Kind regards from Treasure Island!
PRAISE BE! Someone that calls it by the correct name!
Love the sounds the firge makes when its starting, its the same thingvthat happening in. A pulse detonation engine.
It may be a pain with how much time it takes to complete, however even by halfway through the video, the recovery rate of aluminum material is so worth it already!
Damn 20 seconds. My best time ever!!
😃👍👊
Great video. Thanks for posting.
Hella
@@gunkyzip 👍👊
This is real "from trash to treasure"
That’s a lot more than I thought you were going to get…surprised for sure
It would be interesting if you put the value of what you melted at the end, always curious what you’d yield from your melts.
Amazing job ❤
Like those DC shoes
Thanks Paulie!!!
Since aluminum dross is basically aluminum oxide, the less oxygen you use for heat the less dross you have to deal with. An electric furnace would help a lot (and save a fortune on LP !)
I want to subscribe, but I’m already subscribed… your videos are fire! 🎉
Thank you sir!!! I appreciate you! 👍👊
Alright. I'm getting a furnace. I want a collection 1/4 as awesome as yours
Jeez so much slag how long have you been building up that pile!? Super cool vid so far can't wait to see how much you get back!
That was from one melt. Check out my massive can meltdown 8,405 can melting video. There’s a link at the end of this video 👍
watching the melts and pouring is satisfying to watch, but i've been curious about using molds to make parts that can be put together.
Example - could you make molds of LEGO pieces and make metal LEGO from recycled cans? Would they fit with the ABS plastic ones or only with themselves?
I've been wanting to make an articulated robot toy out of real metal for a long time and i'm always curious about the melting and molding process to make parts for it
There is quite a bit of shrinkage as aluminum cools, even if not liquid to start. It has a very large coefficient of expansion/contraction.
The molded pieces would probably not fit with the plastic parts.
His imagine if he ran through all that dross a second time.
U can literally ask neighbors for cans to melt so cheap yet so efficient
Wow brother impressive👍