Re: the power of junk, Is Parallel Programming Hard, And, If So, What Can You Do About It?

According to BGB  <cr88192@gmail.com>:

Don't forget to factor in energy costs.  The energy costs
to refine and produce virgin aluminum are very high, relative
to the costs of recycling aluminum.

>
Granted, but possibly depends on the relative cost of energy.
>
But, likely, as more total aluminum is produced the relative cost of
aluminum would go gown. While recycling aluminum makes sense, it does
come with the tradeoff that recycling aluminum reduces the relative cost
of aluminum (and thus the value of producing new aluminum would go
down), so is less likely to be favored by the primary producers (where a
relative scarcity is better for profit margins, ...).

Aluminum is produced from bauxite which is around 40% aluminum and needs a
multi-step energy intensive process to turn into metallic aluminum.  But
aluminum scrap is already metallic aluminum.  My impression is that we are
about as far down the experience curve as we are likely to get, and using
scrap as a source will always be far cheaper than bauxite.

Your profit margin thing is backwards -- producers charge whatever the market
will bear for the product (plus tariffs these days which is a separate issue)
so the more scrap they can use, the lower their costs so the more money they make.



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