Aluminum, Magnesium and Titanium Could be more important materials for future cars and planes

April 05, 2013

ARPA-E has a program to enable the development of transformative light metal (Al, Mg, Ti) processing technologies that significantly reduce the energy requirement to extract primary metal from ore, reduce emissions associated with primary light metal extraction, and increase the supply of high grade recycled light metal.

Expected Program Outcomes:
1. Energy savings on metals manufacturing of 0.6 Quad/yr
2. Life cycle energy savings from vehicle light weighting of a 2 Quad/yr
3. Emissions reduction of 250 Million Tons of CO2/yr
4. Reduced cost light metals to enable advanced energy technologies
5. Renaissance of U.S. light metal manufacturing

Bringing the costs down by 30-50% will enable Aluminum usage to increase by about 50%, Magnesium to go up 10 times and Titanium to more than double over the next 10-20 years.