• "Bluish white metal, light in weight used in gold and jewelry trades". Such is the definition given for aluminum in a science school textbook in 1900. One hundred years ago, aluminum was nothing more than a costly novelty to be found in a laboratory. Its use was restricted to the making of a few luxury items and ornaments such as the utensils for Napoleon III's table or the eagles on top of the Imperial Guard flags.

• Whats accounts for such a late appearance ? This metal exists only in its raw oxidized state in nature. However, following Silicon and oxygen, it is the third most abundant element to be found in the earth's crust. It represents 8% of the total weight of the lithosphere. In nature, it exists in the form of silicates or aluminum oxide (alumina) and can be found in certain sedimentary rocks of the laterite and bauxite family (aluminum ore). While the presence of metals was already suspected in alum mineral as early as in the Middle Ages, and 18th-century scientists had proven its theoretical existence, traditional methods known since the birth of copper metallurgy could not be applied to alumina and did not enable aluminum metal be extracted from its ores.

The early Days of aluminum

• In 1807, the English electrochemist Sir Humphrey Davy unsuccessfully endeavored to produce aluminum by electrolysis using a mixture of alumina and potassium.

• In 1825, the Danish physicist H.C.Oersted successfully produced the first aluminum particles by reducing aluminum chloride with an amalgam of potassium.

• In 1827, the German chemist F. Wohler obtained a sufficient quantity of aluminum by reducing the chloride with potassium to determine the characteristics of the metal.

• In 1854, The French chemist H. Sainte Claire Deville succeeded in developing aluminum industrial production (kilograms) by reducing sodium aluminum chloride with sodium metal.

Just a hundred years old

• Aluminium was lifted to triumph only with the simultaneous invention of electrometallurgy in France and the United States by Paul Héroult and Charles Hall (1886). This method of industrial aluminum production is still in use today. The process relies on the electrolysis of aluminum oxide dissolved in a solution of molten cryolite.

• This invention marked the birth and the expansion of a great modern industry which has merged its standard methods with the latest advances in the computer sciences.

• In 1918, the firm Société Electrochimique de Mercus launches a corundum plant. PECHINEY acquires the plant in 1953 and sets up its first electrolytic refining cells.

• MERCUS becomes subsequently specialized in the production of refined aluminum. The commitment of men and successive investments have made MERCUS the most important refining plant in the western world (20% of the western world market).

• The MERCUS site is the only industrial complex in Europe and in the United States which unifies in a single location every aluminum purification process in use today.