Smelt aluminum without electricity?

[Justonium]

Does anybody know of a way that aluminum can be smelted without using electricity? Aluminum metal was never isolated until it was electrolyzed from molten ore, but now days, could there have been an alternate, if less practical, method of extraction discovered which requires no electricity or substances produced through electrolysis? Maybe some fancy way of cheating the reactivity series using coke to displace the aluminum?

[the_seraphim]

your trying to bypass the molten cryolite?

 

i dunno, i reckon if it was possible, aliminium companies would be all over it, unless its totally un-scalable and more expensive than via electricity.

 

how come you want to bypass using electricity... i mean, on a small scale, i cant see it being too expensive or difficult,

[Justonium]

Oh, I'm just curious, that's all. Maybe if people had discovered this method that I'm looking for (if it exists), they could have started smelting aluminum before the required electrical technology was available. After all, metallic aluminum has been found in nature, so why should electricity be necessary to smelt it. It might be more economical, but I'm still curious.

 

(By the way, most chemistry textbooks say that aluminum metal does not occur naturally, but they are just outdated, it is rarely found sparsely in volcanic rocks. I suspect very high pressures underground can force normally very product favored reactions backwards in order to reduce aluminum ions using LeChatelier's Principle.)