Finding opportunity in aluminum waste

Ray Dubosq sees profit where others see only an ugly waste.

The ugly waste is called dross. It's the scum that forms on the top of a pot of molten aluminum as it cools. The problem for the industry has always been the longer the molten metal takes to cool, the thicker the crust of waste will be and the greater the amount of potential metal lost.

"The problem has always been if you don't cool it right away, then it turns to garbage," said Ray Dubosq, owner of Hamilton-based MFS Systems (2207) Inc.

For the past 20 years, first as a contractor and now as the owner, Dubosq has been building a reputation in the metals industry for a new solution to that problem -- a simple and environmentally sensitive way of cooling metal quickly to reduce losses.

"We've got quite a niche in the market now," Dubosq said. "Before us, there was a lot of dumping going on, a lot of this material would end up going to the dump."

At its most basic, Dubosq's system involves cooling the metal by placing it in a drum rotating through water. The water cools the drum, which in turn cools the metal without releasing any noxious steam or vapours into the air.

Traditionally, dross has been skimmed off the surface before the metal is poured into a mould or casting flask. By remelting the dross, a company could recover about 30 per cent of its volume in usable aluminum.

Dubosq's rotary coolers, however, can cool a load from 920 C to 100 C in about an hour, compared with eight hours for traditional methods. The dross resulting from rotary cooling contain up to 55 per cent usable aluminum -- that means a better payoff for the trouble of remelting it and less energy used to achieve more results.