Abstract
THE Engineer is publishing a series of illustrated articles entitled “Air Force Targets in Germany”, in which much information is given about the docks, harbours, canals, factories, railways and power stations which are so often in the news. Three of the latest articles to appear, published respectively on October 18 and 25 and November 1, deal generally with Germany's aluminium industry and especially with the large works at Lauta, to the north-west of Dresden, at Bitterfeld in the Leipzig district and at Rheinfelden in the extreme south-west of Germany. The last is the oldest works, having been started in 1898, while the other two were planned in 1915-17 to meet the needs of the time. Each of the works consist of three main sections; an electric generating and transforming station, factories housing the groups of electrolytic baths or furnaces and foundries in which the metal is cast into ingots and bars and rolled into sections and sheets. The raw materials needed for the production of one ton of aluminium are 4 tons of bauxite, 80 kilos of artificial cryolite, about 600 kilos of carbon electrodes, and some 23,000 kw. of electric energy. The process time varies from 100 to 130 hours. In 1929 Germany's output of aluminium was 33,000 metric tons out of a world total of 282,000 tons and by 1938 it had risen to 163,600 tons out of a world output of 579,900. More than 70 per cent of Germany's light alloy manufacturing capacity is Government owned, and every effort has been made to extend the use of these light alloys and to manufacture them from home-produced raw materials.
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Germany's Aluminium Industry. Nature 146, 713 (1940). https://doi.org/10.1038/146713b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/146713b0