Reasons Aluminium is so rare

[Cam]

I know the official reason is that it is hard to make, but chances are, even unprocessed aluminium would be much harder to locate with steel or iron burning, which I assume is the most common technique for prospecting.

 

Steel or Iron burning prospectors would easily find veins of other metals, making mining significantly easier, but this would not work for aluminium ores.

 

Unless the unprocessed forms can be traced easily, in which case I am completely wrong.

[Voidus]

I believe it's only refined Aluminium that's allomantically resistant, not its ores. Otherwise pure Aluminium wouldn't have been needed for the guns.
 

[Lord Tavash Shar]

Raw Aluminum (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bauxite) is an Earthmetal or Metaloid meaning that even with its impurities its hard to justify Steel/Iron Allomancy effecting it. 

 

Its also worth noting that apparently they have not learned much about electrolysis yet and are not using the Hall-Heroult Processes Which is why we have so much cheep Aluminum.

 

So yes. Expensive. 

[Kaymyth]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but can Iron/Steel even "see" pure aluminum?  I didn't think that they could.  That's part of what makes it so dangerous.

 

Also, a lot of its alloys have the same properties.  The guns themselves may not even be pure aluminum, they might be an alloy.  The bullets are definitely an alloy; Wax said something about how they had to be to pick up the weight and reduce abrasiveness to the barrel of the gun.

 

The most common form of aluminum ore is bauxite, which basically looks and feels like rock until it's refined.  Also, it's worth noting that a lot of precious gemstones like rubies and sapphires are primarily forms of aluminum oxide.  Aluminum is *everywhere*, one of the most common elements to be found.  It's just so blasted reactive that it binds to everything in sight.

[gjustice99]

If it can't be pushed or pulled with iron or steel then it can't be seen by them either.

[king of nowhere]

I don't think you can use iron or steel to prospect for metals, because in most cases metals are not present as such in nature. they are combined with oother compounds, mostly oxygen or sulphur. there are only a few metals that are found as oure ores, mostly the noble metals who are inert enough to not react with anything else. otherwise, they are not in metallic form. while there are some pure nuggets of metals here and there, industrial extraction of any non-noble metal is digging some other chemical form of the metal.

[Voidus]

If it can't be pushed or pulled with iron or steel then it can't be seen by them either.

I'm not sure about that, Inquisitors for example could see the lines going to everything, and I think there's other references to seeing lines but not being able to affect them.

[skaa]

Perhaps TLR moved a big chunk of the planet's aluminum ore deposits somewhere far from imperial territory (like, perhaps in the Southern Continent) to make its anti-Allomancy properties less likely to be discovered by rebels. But yeah, the simplest (and most boring) explanation is maybe they haven't discovered the Hall-Heroult process yet.

Edited December 23, 2014 by skaa

[Kaymyth]

Perhaps TLR moved a big chunk of the planet's aluminum ore deposits somewhere far from imperial territory (like, perhaps in the Southern Continent) to make its anti-Allomancy properties less likely to be discovered by rebels. But yeah, the simplest (and most boring) explanation is maybe they haven't discovered the Hall-Heroult process yet.

 

Hall-Heroult is dependent on electricity, which is still in its early stages.  We know that TLR suppressed the knowledge of gunpowder to keep control of people; I suspect that the many uses of electricity were also something he didn't want known.

[king of nowhere]

I also suspect that because of allomancy they put more research into metallurgy and less into redox reactions. which is ironic, because it ended up causing them to be less advanced in metals for a while.

also less reseach in electricity. long ddistance communication with the telegraph was one of the earliest uses of it, and since they were all concentrated in a small area they didn't felt much need for it. I suspect in general all their elecctricity related research is behind compared to our world.

[Kaymyth]

We know they'll have to figure it out sooner or later.  I mean, even setting aside inevitability of technological progress, aluminum alloys are sort of integral to the development of an aerospace industry.  No aluminum, no airplanes!

[Lord Tavash Shar]

We know they'll have to figure it out sooner or later.  I mean, even setting aside inevitability of technological progress, aluminum alloys are sort of integral to the development of an aerospace industry.  No aluminum, no airplanes!

Aluminum was Integral to the development of our Non Magic enhanced world.

 

As a thought experiment. Imagine how ballooning changes with an Iron compounder at the helm.

[Nahlion Dahlyr]

I'm fairly certain that aluminum is common enough, but is just in such tiny deposits throughout the world that it's just frustrating to get enough to do anything with. (that was the case here on earth before technology reached the point we could collect it all easily)

[Kaymyth]

I'm fairly certain that aluminum is common enough, but is just in such tiny deposits throughout the world that it's just frustrating to get enough to do anything with. (that was the case here on earth before technology reached the point we could collect it all easily)

 

It isn't so much that there are tiny deposits as aluminum is highly chemically reactive.  This means that it's near-impossible to find pure aluminum naturally; it's all bound up in various oxidized forms.  There's LOTS of aluminum out there, but part of the joy of its high chemical reactiveness is that it binds to other things really, really hard.  That makes it extremely difficult and expensive to separate it from the other elements without the addition of the Hall-Heroult electrolysis process.

[Lord Tavash Shar]

It isn't so much that there are tiny deposits as aluminum is highly chemically reactive.  This means that it's near-impossible to find pure aluminum naturally; it's all bound up in various oxidized forms.  There's LOTS of aluminum out there, but part of the joy of its high chemical reactiveness is that it binds to other things really, really hard.  That makes it extremely difficult and expensive to separate it from the other elements without the addition of the Hall-Heroult electrolysis process.

 

Really hard? Try Near impossible. Without Hall-Heroult Electrolysis a good 70% of aluminum ores is Useless chunks of ore. So its a Big Deal to be unable to use electrolysis to Produce it.

[Kaymyth]

Really hard? Try Near impossible. Without Hall-Heroult Electrolysis a good 70% of aluminum ores is Useless chunks of ore. So its a Big Deal to be unable to use electrolysis to Produce it.

 

Well, yeah.   You can squeeze it out of some, but it consumes a bunch of pretty expensive materials in and of itself.  Which is why before Hall-Heroult, people were putting bars of the stuff into their crown jewel displays.