The mesh size of this Aluminium Powder is -200 vs. the -300 mesh for the other metal powders and gives a better cold cast effect compared with other mesh size powders that we tested. Polished castings are brighter vs. castings made using nickel/silver powder, which has more of an antique metal look.
Spherical Aluminium Powder is perfect for producing castings with antique brass finishes. Polish the surface to bring out the shine of the metal powder. Afterward, apply a shoe polish to add depth and character to your pieces.
Polish your castings to produce a realistic cast bronze piece. Allow the metal in your castings to achieve a natural patina or accelerate the process with patina solutions.
With Atomized Aluminium Powder, you can give your castings a bright, modern copper appearance great for low relief wall art. Burnish with black shoe polish and apply chemical patina for a stunning rustic look.
Castings made using nickel/silver powder can be polished to produce more of an antique metal look compared to the aluminum metal powder. When mixed with SmoothCast® ONYX plastic castings will have better heat resistance for applications where temperatures may exceed 200°F.
The two solid fuel boosters that burned for two minutes helping the U.S.’s old space shuttle fleet to reach its orbit each contained 80 tons of Non-spherical Aluminium Powder, which corresponds to 16 percent of the total weight of the solid fuel. "This idea of burning metals as a fuel sounds pretty far out there, but this is something that has been done in rockets forever," says Jeffrey Bergthorson, an aeronautics engineer at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. He and colleagues at McGill and at the European Space Agency published this week in Applied Energy a study outlining how metal powder could serve as a zero-carbon fuel to power transportation and the grid.
"Aluminum powder has long been known to be a very energetic material," says Bergthorson. But other metals such as magnesium—remember the magnesium flash light—zinc, and even lithium and silicon could do as well. "If we look at the elements available in the Earth's crust, iron is the third most abundant element, and the idea of the iron economy is that once you got this thing going, you will be recycling that iron. Initially you will need a production from ore, but at some point you would not be mining iron anymore, you would simply be recycling it back and forth, adding the iron in at the point of use," says Bergthorson.
Bergthorson and his colleagues' idea is not to use Aluminium Metal Powders as a primary energy source, but as a way to store, transport and trade it as a zero-carbon fuel. If this sounds similar to the idea of a hydrogen economy, it is. In the hydrogen economy the gas is manufactured by solar or other renewable forms of energy and then distributed as a fuel that can drive cars and other transport systems. Bergthorson proposes that instead iron powder would be distributed as a means to drive power plants, ships, locomotives and even cars.
