BASIC INDUSTRIES

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 58, 10 March 1933, Page 3

BASIC INDUSTRIES

EADICAL CHANGE

AGE OF ALUMINIUM

The next metal age for our civilisation, which began with the iron age and evolved to the present chromealloy era, will be the- aluminium age, said Professor Colin G. Fink, head of the Division of Electrochemistry, Columbia. Universityl, at. the annual winter convention of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers held in New York recently, states the "New York Times." ' '.■/...,- ~ Indications are, Mr. Fink said, that radical changes will take place in basic industries ten years from now by the increasing application of electricity to chemical processes, of which aluminium is one of the products. Railroads, he said, will completely modify design and structure of their equipment, and speeds of a hundred miles per hour, will be common. New transatlantic steamers will profit by the experience of "high-speed motor boats and aeroplanes, and the aeroplane too, will be much lighter in weight and will operate higher speeds. Buildings will no longer be encumbered with he ( avy walls and floors, but glass and metal will predominate, he held. "As to future electric power consumption for electrochemical industries," he added, "we can safely predict that in another ten years it will be twice that which it was at the peak, in' 1929; it will be at least 30,000,000,000 kilowatt hours per annum, or about one-third the total power geenrated in the United States today. "The keynote of the coming new.era will be the large number of new products and devices. Among the metals the one metal to enter the widest variety of new fields will be aluminium— for railway equipment, roofs, and buildings, food, containers, transmission, aeroplanes, tank cars, pipe lines, fencing, and similar products." i Professor Pink revealed the development at the electrochemical laboratories at Columbia University of now aluminium plate, which, he said, is "superior in many respects to tin plate." ALMOST LIMITLESS SUPPLY. "There is every indication," he added, "that by 1942 the world's output of aluminium will total 600,000 tons, twice the output of 1928, and equivalent in volume to the 1929 world's production of copper. The electric power requirements to operate the electrolytic cells for 600,000 tons of aluminium will amount to over 14,000,000,000 kilowatt hours. . "Whereas tho supply of raw material for many of our metals is comparatively limited in years, the supply of bauxite, or aluminium ore, is almost limitless. Por example, whereas copper, at the 1929 rate of consumption, will last but forty to forty-five years, the aluminium ore reserves will satisfy our demands for many hundreds ot years." . -