Innovating Aluminium’s Future: On the Casting Floor with the Experts of AIT-LKR

The European aluminium industry is at a turning point. With secondary (recycled) aluminium requiring just 5% of the energy needed to produce primary material, unlocking a truly circular economy is essential for meeting Europe’s decarbonization goals. That is exactly what the RecAL (Recycling technologies for circular ALuminium) project is designed to do.

To give you a behind-the-scenes look at how we are turning this vision into reality, we recently traveled to the casting floor at AIT-LKR (Leichtmetallkompetenzzentrum Ranshofen) in Upper Austria. Through our latest video series, we’re highlighting the hands-on research of two exceptional scientists—Katrin Mester and Giulia Scampone—who are quite literally reshaping the future of metal.

Decoding the Microstructure with Katrin Mester

In our first video, Katrin Mester walks us through the meticulous process of aluminium alloy development. The primary challenge in recycling aluminium is that end-of-life scrap is often mixed with “troublemaker” impurity elements like iron, manganese, zinc, and copper.

To create high-performance alloys that can tolerate these impurities, Katrin relies on advanced characterization tools like the Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM). By examining the unique morphology of intermetallic phases at a microscopic level, she can predict how the material will behave in the real world.

If an alloy’s microstructure looks promising—meaning the heavy element concentrations are well-distributed rather than clumped together—it moves on to mechanical evaluation using a tensile testing machine.

These tests measure critical industrial metrics like tensile strength, ductility, and crash resistance. As Katrin explains, the ultimate goal of her work on the RecAL project is clear: design an alloy that utilizes the absolute maximum amount of scrap while requiring the absolute minimum amount of primary aluminium.

Mastering Fluid Dynamics with Giulia Scampone

Once an alloy is designed, it needs to be castable. In our second video, Giulia Scampone takes us to the heavy machinery, showcasing AIT-LKR’s impressive 1,100-ton High-Pressure Die Casting (HPDC) unit.

Giulia’s work investigates how different levels of scrap impurities affect the filling behavior and fluid dynamics of the molten alloy. To test this, the team utilizes a highly specialized “snake tool”—a custom mold with a 3-meter filling length and interchangeable inserts. By outfitting the tool with advanced temperature and pressure sensors, as well as thermal imaging cameras, Giulia can monitor exactly how the molten metal flows and solidifies.

This research is vital for the future of manufacturing. By proving that high-scrap alloys maintain excellent fluid dynamic behavior, Giulia’s work helps ensure that RecAL’s sustainable metals can be used for large, complex industrial applications, such as automotive mega-casting components.

© AIT

AIT-LKR: The Engine Behind RecAL

It’s no coincidence that this vital research is happening at AIT-LKR. The Leichtmetallkompetenzzentrum Ranshofen (a wholly owned subsidiary of the Austrian Institute of Technology) isn’t just a testing site; they are the lead coordinators of the entire Horizon Europe RecAL project. Backed by €10.6 million in EU funding, AIT-LKR leads a consortium of 19 European partners from research and industry. While they are developing the digital RecAL Dataspace to connect aluminium suppliers and buyers across the continent, their work on the ground in Upper Austria—led by brilliant engineers like Katrin and Giulia—is actively solving the physical limitations of alloy design. By increasing impurity tolerance without compromising structural integrity, AIT-LKR is proving that high-tech performance and the circular economy go hand in hand.