(Oak Ridge National Laboratory: Oak Ridge, TN) -- A wave of aluminum auto body scrap is set to enter salvage systems over the next decade. This scrap is often too impure to be safely reused in new, critical automotive parts, limiting its value.

That’s changing thanks to a team of researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), which developed an innovative new aluminum alloy, called RidgeAlloy, that transforms low-value scrap into a high-value domestic supply chain for manufacturing new structural automotive parts. 

The DOE’s critical materials list includes aluminum because it’s essential to energy technologies, including those that produce, transmit, store, and conserve energy.

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