Assessment of Mechanical and Optical Properties of Al 6060 Alloy Particles by Removal of Contaminants

The use of aluminum as a light‐weight construction material in automotive engineering has increased steadily in recent years among other sectors. However, the production of primary aluminum requires significantly more energy than the production of steel, which motivates the recycling of existing aluminum components. Based on the results of past investigations, this interdisciplinary study expands the potential applications of a friction‐induced solid‐state recycling process to reduce the amount of energy, which is needed in the aluminum production and thus also to reduce the CO₂ footprint of the industrial sector. To increase the processability of different conditions of the aluminum chips, a chemical pretreatment was performed to remove an applied cooling lubricant. This study shows that under the use of the chemical cleaning method presented here, it is possible to improve the mechanical properties significantly.