A Hundred Years of the Bayer Process for Alumina Production

Abstract

On August 3, 1888 German Patent No. 43977 entitled “A Process for the Production of Aluminum Hydroxide” was issued**. The discovery which led to the patent was made by the Austrian chemist Karl Josef Bayer (1847–1904) (Figure 1) who was at that time in Russia, and the process became known as the Bayer Process in his honour (1,2). The process immediately achieved industrial success, displacing the pyrometallurgical process that had been used until that time to produce alumina. The Bayer Process involved the pressure leaching of bauxite with NaOH solution to obtain sodium aluminate solution from which aluminum hydroxide was precipitated by seeding.

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Published simultaneously in the January 1988 issue of Bulletin of the Canadian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy and Light Metals 1988 by a special arrangement.