When the Braidy Industries mill starts making aluminum, Kentucky will be home to another secret recipe. This one won’t be a finger-lickin’-good blend of 11 herbs and spices. Instead, it’s a space-age mix of alloys that will make aluminum lighter and stronger to make vehicles weigh less yet be safer on the road.
Just like Colonel Sanders used his secret recipe to launch Kentucky Fried Chicken from a Corbin chicken cafè to a global favorite, Braidy Industries’ proprietary formula will make Kentucky a worldwide leader in sheet aluminum, plate and ultra-high strength alloys for the automotive and aerospace industries.
The Braidy mill was designed to meet demand from manufacturers that are using more aluminum to make vehicles, which are still durable but don’t use as much fuel.
In the U.S. automotive market, the Corporate Average Fuel Economy Standards are driving automakers like Ford and General Motors to replace steel parts with aluminum parts. Ford made a big move toward aluminum with the 2010 model year F-150 pickup, the best selling vehicle in the world. Today, more than 200 vehicle models from numerous manufacturers are built with aluminum.
Aluminum is one-third the density of steel, so Ford saved about 700 pounds in making the F-150 out of aluminum. Aluminum absorbs energy twice as well as steel, and every aluminum-bodied vehicle crash tested by regulators has earned a five-star safety rating.
Overall, cars are getting heavier because they’re bigger, and automakers are packing in more electronics and safety features like cameras and entertainment systems.
Also, electric vehicles are built with lightweight materials, so aluminum components help eke out more mileage from each battery charge.
The goal for Braidy Industries is to meet the demand for lightweight vehicle components. That’s where the secret recipe comes into play.
Rather than paprika and pepper, the Braidy recipe uses a secret blend of ingredients and techniques developed by one of the board members, Dr. Christopher Schuh. He is head of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or MIT, with a research focus on metallurgy. His team has developed new forms of metal coating and new ways to combine metals into super strong alloys.
In March, Braidy acquired one of Dr. Schuh’s companies, Veloxint, which has developed ultra-high strength alloys unrivaled by traditional materials such as steel and titanium. The Veloxint team has found a way to make alloys that are 200 to 500 percent stronger without changing the density. This means extreme performance in a component can be achieved with Veloxint alloys at a fraction of the weight - translating into faster and more fuel efficient cars and planes, even lighter rockets or space satellite components.
The Veloxint technology broadens Braidy Industries' impact beyond aluminum and its applications. The extreme strengths in Veloxint alloys can be used to create longer lasting tools for oil and gas drilling, better performing mining equipment, consumer electronics and hand tools as well as military applications such as lightweight body and vehicle armor to better serve our men and women in uniform.
“The metallurgical expertise is really going to help us in the aluminum mill. There’s no question about that,” said Alan Blankshain, executive vice president of engineering. “When you think of Braidy Industries, you should be thinking about business devoted to making metal components lighter and stronger.”
John Preston, another Braidy board member and former director of technology development for MIT, will help bring the metallurgical innovations to market. “The last decade has seen rapid advances in material science similar to advances in the computer/internet fields in the 1990s,” Preston said. “These advances, both in processing equipment and new materials, are now ripe for full-scale deployment which enables cost-effective material substitution – reducing the weight of vehicles and planes, saving vast amounts of energy and reducing dependence on scarce materials.”
Aluminum is typically 100 percent recyclable, so the goal is to establish a circular supply chain with downstream companies that process and make components out of the aluminum.
“Our theory is that we will deliver a coil of aluminum to them and then pick up their scrap and put that scrap right back into the melting furnaces and keep it moving,” Blankshain said.
Automakers are already building the aluminum from the plant into their production plans, so it’s essential to meet the construction schedule.
“We’re under time pressure because our automotive customers are already thinking about what car models they are going to put our products on, so we’re locked into the schedule,” Blankshain said. “When the first aluminum rolls off the line, we’ll breathe a sigh of relief.”
When aluminum from the Braidy Industries mill starts hitting the automotive market, the world spotlight will once again turn toward Kentucky innovation.