Apple Card — Design Life-Cycle (2024)

Jing Qian

DES 40A Fall 2019

Professor Cogdell

4 December 2019

Raw materials of the Apple credit card

Apple just released its first credit card and it made many Apple fans crazy about it. The design of the Apple credit card is very consistent with other Apple products. It’s simple, metal-finish, and consisted the less is more concept. When a customer got their new Apple credit card, they will most likely be surprised. The weight of the Apple credit card is much heavier than a normal credit card, which it should be because the materials used in making Apple credit card is not like the common plastic. Instead, Apple chooses Titanium and its alloy to make this beautiful credit card. Titanium and its alloy are widely used in the aircraft and space-related materials due to its high tensile strength perspective. Titanium and its alloys are environmentally friendly to use in the whole production process and it can be completely reused and recycled. However, the current process of getting titanium is energy-intensive. If there is a better way to refine the process of extracting titanium, the environmental impact will be more minor and using titanium will be more sustainable. Although titanium is an uncommonly used material in making credit cards, the overall cradle-to-grave environmental impacts are low due to the material’s high reuse potential and recyclability.

The raw materials acquisition of Titanium is somewhat easy, but it needs to go through some processes to get pure titanium and its desire alloy for further production. Titanium can be obtained from various ores from the earth which formed naturally. Titanium can be found all around the world, it is the fourth most abundant metal of the earth’s crust but most of the titanium is not pure. So, to get titanium out and produce its alloy, we need to use a manufacturing process called the Kroll process. Freemantle expands the Kroll process very detailed. Within the Kroll process, we need to first extract the titanium concentrates from mines. This process is mainly getting rid of other components inside of the mine. The mine should be heated to 900°C to start the chemical reaction reacts along with carbon and chlorine gas. Then, after the reaction, it will create an impure titanium tetrachloride (TiCl4) and carbon monoxide. After the extraction step, we need to move on to the purification. In this step, we need to put titanium tetrachloride (TiCl4) into distillation tanks and heated. Through fractional distillation and precipitation, it will help to remove unwanted metal chlorides and purified titanium products. The third step is called “production of the sponge.” In this step, the purified titanium tetrachloride is transferred as a liquid to a reactor vessel made by stainless steel. We need to add magnesium into the reactor vessel and heat it to 1100 °C. Under this reaction, argon will be generated, and it will help to get the air out of the reactor vessel. The magnesium reacts with the chlorine resulting in liquid magnesium chloride, which keeps pure titanium in solid form, and it will not be involved in this reaction since titanium has a higher melting point than liquid magnesium chloride. Until this step, it is only in the middle of the Kroll process. As we can see we need to use many chemical materials, machines, and high temperature in the Kroll process which indeed consumed intensive energy.

After pure titanium solid being left out, we need to take it out of the reactor vessel by boring and then add water and hydrochloric acid to help with further purification to get rid of extract magnesium and magnesium chloride. The reason that this step is called “production of the sponge” is that that after the last step mentioned above, the left pure titanium solid will become porous and which looks like and called as “sponge.” Finally, the last step in the Kroll process is alloy creation. As the name implied, we need the “sponge” from the last step to produce its alloy. The pure titanium sponge can be converted into alloy using vacuum consumable-electrode arc furnace (VAF), which is mainly used for melting titanium. The "sponge" needs to be mixed with the various alloy additions and scrap metal. After mixing, the mixture will be hard-pressed and welded, the resulting product is called the "sponge electrode." Next, the vacuum arc furnace will melt the sponge electrode to form an ingot. The ingot needs to melt again and again to produce an acceptable final ingot for industrial further uses and production. According to the United States’ ingot standard, a standard ingot should be weighed about 9000 lb. and are 30 inches in diameter. After the ingot is made, the Kroll process comes to the end and the ingot then will be shipped to manufacturer factories for various productions. In this step, we need to purified titanium solid, hard-pressed, and weld the metal. The whole Kroll process uses lots of energy and the process is undoubtedly needed to improve to make the overall titanium a more sustainable material.

The way how the industry gets titanium should be considered as environmentally friendly, but it can be better if people use a better method to eliminate the intensive energy uses. During the whole process of the Kroll process, which is from the very first raw titanium mine to pure titanium and its alloy’s ingots, the byproduct that got produced will be magnesium chloride. Although there is a byproduct during the production process, magnesium chloride can be recycled in a recycling cell immediately after it got produced. The magnesium metal inside of the magnesium chloride will be extracted, and the left chloride will become in gas form and get collected inside of the recycling cell. The reason that producing titanium is environmentally friendly is that both metal magnesium and chloride gas will be fully recycled and reused into the next cycle of the Kroll process. However, the VAR process and all the healing processes to start reactions indeed use lots of energy. So, to make the process more sustainable and more environmentally friendly, it is necessary to find an alternative method to replace the Kroll process. Overall, after the Kroll process, the titanium material is performed great not only in durability but also in future fully recyclability.

Then, the ingot moves to the next stage in manufacturing. In this case, the ingot needs to be sliced into 3 3⁄8 × 2 1⁄8 inches and rounded corners with a radius of 2.88–3.48 mm. The thickness is 0.03 inches according to the ISO/IEC 7810 ID-1 standard for credit cards. In this process, no new material will be generated but the ingot needs to be converted into general mill products before cutting. Since titanium will start to react when it heats up, the cutting process should be down in cold. Base on research, the famous tools used in cutting titanium blocks is Lennox Ti-Master Band, the blades of the band are carbide tipped and made from titanium carbide or tungsten carbide. The other parts are mainly made of steel. Along with the cutting process, a coolant is needed to keep the titanium blocks cool. The coolant used is usually CoolCut #500 made most by liquid and it is reuse during the process. After cutting, the shape of the Apple credit card comes out. Then once further manufacture processes like adding chips and magnet strip are done, the Apple credit card is finished.

After the first two production steps, the benefits and the advantage of using titanium will be shown in the following steps of the life-cycle process. Shifting to the distribution and transportation part, we need to use many materials that other products will also be using. For example, we need trucks even ships and/or airplanes depends on the location the Apple card is made. We will need tons of gasoline to feed these transportation tools which do make a profound environmental impact. However, since almost all manufacturing products need to go through this step, there is no special about the process in titanium specifically. The only way to eliminate the energy and the material uses is to work on finding a more sustainable way to transport and distribute products.

Because titanium is famous for its longevity, durability, corrosion-resistant and many other great characteristics, Titanium can be last very long. That is why “use, re-use, maintenance” is probability the longest phrase in this life-cycle cycle, especially when titanium is applying to a credit card, it is easy to imagine that the card can be used in decays and as long as Apple keeps its credit card business alive. This is one of the reasons that why titanium is a good material to use in consumer products, as long as people use it in a normal basis and not to do something extremely rough like break the card, the beautiful titanium Apple credit card can stay with you as long as you want. It can even resist fire, so it is indeed strong and designed for a long life. The maintenance is also simple, one of the advantages of titanium is that it does not require you to be extra careful.

Of course, no matter how strong the titanium credit card was, it will always come to the recycle step eventually. However, it is not a complicated process as we thought. Titanium is 100% recyclable eco metal based on many pieces of research. Recycling titanium and its alloy usually undergo the IME recycling process, which contains three steps: scrap conditioning, vacuum induction melting, and vacuum arc remelting. In the first conditioning step, the unused titanium will be clean in the washing process which evolves Ethanol. Then the next step is briquetting, the purpose is to enable inductive coupling and facilitating feedstock charging during VIM. Continuing with oil separation, the remaining volatile impurities will be removed. The next main step is VIM. The purpose of this step is to deoxidize the products. This step needs the heating and adds CaAl2 to deoxidize titanium. According toFriedrich,the excess CaAl2 will be charged and collect for future reuse. The VIM process once again makes the unused titanium back to the pure titanium ingot form. Lastly, the VAR step helps to re-melt the titanium ingot to refine it. The final product of the titanium ingot is completed recycled, and it is allowed for future further industrial or consumption production. After the recycling process, it only generates little waste and the titanium can be fully recycled.

Overall of the materials used in the whole life cycle process, titanium is a very preferable material to use in various products. However, the production Kroll process still can be improved to reduce energy uses. If the future scientific improvement will reduce the energy use of producing titanium, it will become more sustainable and environmentally friendly. After it is produced, it’s durability can save many energy and materials because people will use it longer and change their products less frequently. The titanium Apple credit card is a great product because Apple has considered its design from the very first step of choosing materials. Though the use of titanium, it created the luxury looking and the material make the card different from others. For the most important part, it is fully recyclable and sustainable. Apple maybe start a new fashion of titanium credit card, then if more and more credit card companies replace its non-environmental friendly plastic card to titanium card, the world will become better by eliminating the plastic use, and it will definitely fasten the process of developing less energy use way to produce titanium since it becomes common. In the future, people will be benefited from the use of more sustainable materials in no doubt, and the tried by Apple today has proved that people already start changing and stepping up to the future.

Bibliography

Binggeli, Corky. “Chapter 9 Metals.”Materials for Interior Environment, pp. 166–167.

“Card Production - TagNitecrest: Financial Cards & Smart Solutions.”TagNitecrest,https://www.tagnitecrest.com/card-production/.

AppleInsider. “Unsurprisingly, the Apple Card Isn't 100% Titanium.”AppleInsider AppleInsider,3 Sept. 2019, https://appleinsider.com/

articles/19/09/03/unsurprisingly-the-apple-card-isnt-100-titanium.

Contributors, HowStuffWorks.com. “How Does a Magnetic Stripe on the Back of a Credit CardWork?”HowStuffWorks, HowStuffWorks, 14 Apr. 2008,https://money.howstuffworks.com/personal-finance/debt-management/magnetic-stripe-credit-card.htm.

“Are Credit Cards Recyclable? It's Complicated.”CreditCards.com, 12 Apr. 2019,https://www.creditcards.com/credit-card-news/are-credit-cards-recyclable.php.

Credit Cards have become the most popular payment method in the world in just 68 years. Apple introduced its own credit card in August this year and Apple describes it as “A New Kind of Credit Card Created by Apple.” This card is special because of its Apple look and “Four No” feature, which are “no card number, no CVV security code, no expiration date, no signature.” The main part of Apple Card is on the phone, and you can also apply for a physical card. Our research focused on the life cycle of its physical card. Through a lot of researches, I found that in terms of energy consumption, Apple Card is also quite special.

Unlike regular credit cards, Apple Card’s main material is titanium. Apple Officials equivocated that their metal credit card is made of titanium, in fact, some of the data shows that 90 % of the card are titanium alloy and the other 10 % are aluminum alloy and other materials. I classified it as a titanium alloy product because it was difficult to determine its exact compositions. Titanium alloys are generally known to be high end materials. They are mainly used to make aircraft engine compressor components, followed by rockets, missiles and high-speed aircraft components so it's also called the cosmic metal. But using such an advanced material to make a credit card makes me feel overqualified. And it is much more expensive than the usual credit card materials, plastic. As we all known the price of a product is often proportional to the energy and process required to make it. Although it is only a 15-gram card, it has also gone through many complicated processes to reach the user.

First of all is mining, titanium is often found in the natural environment in the form ilmenite (A black iron titanium oxide mineral). “Most ilmenite forms during the slow cooling of magma chambers and is concentrated through the process of magmatic segregation. A large underground magma chamber can take centuries to cool. As it cools, crystals of ilmenite will begin forming at a specific temperature. These crystals are heavier than the surrounding melt and sink to the bottom of the magma chamber. This causes ilmenite and similar-temperature minerals, such as magnetite, to accumulate in a layer at the bottom of the magma chamber. These ilmenite-bearing rocks are often gabbro, norite, or anorthosite. Ilmenite also crystallizes in veins and cavities and sometimes occurs as well-formed crystals in pegmatites.” The way ilmenite is formed makes it difficult to mine, which means that people need heavy machinery to mine and then use mining trucks to take the ore and sand out of the mine. I have not been able to calculate how much energy it will consume to mine and transport these ores, and I infer from the Gross Power of different kinds of mining trucks, which are from 1500 HP to 4500 HP, that it will consume a lot of diesel.

The second step is to processes the ore. This process is the main reason why titanium alloy products are expensive, because of the huge amount of energy consumed in the process. There are basically three main parts, which arePrimary Metal Production, Secondary Processing, Semi-Finished Shape Production, to go through to get different products. Over time, the technology has improved and is still evolving. The main purpose of these evolution is to reduce the loss of materials, improve the use of fuel, so as to reduce energy consumption, and finally achieve the goal of reducing the price of titanium alloy products.

The traditional process of titanium smelting is the Kroll process, which uses metal Sodium or metal Magnesium to reduce titanium tetrachloride to obtain metal titanium. Since titanium is produced below the melting point of titanium (the melting point of titanium is 1667.8 °C and the temperature of the Kroll process is about 950 °C), the resulting titanium metal is spongy like, so it is named "spongy titanium". The Kroll process has three main processes: preparation of titanium-rich materials, preparation of titanium tetrachloride and reduction distillation to produce titanium sponge. Titanium-rich materials are usually prepared from ilmenite to remove as much iron as possible and to enrich titanium components; TiCl4is prepared from chlorine, converting titanium components from oxides to chlorides, including chlorination and refining; titanium tetrachloride is reduced and distilled by magnesium vapor, and titanium sponge was obtained by mixing titanium tetrachloride with magnesium vapor at 900℃. However, the traditional Kroll process is discontinuous, takes a long time and has many steps, while TiCl4is volatile and corrosive at room temperature, which makes the production cost of titanium sponge very high and limits the application of titanium in various industries. Later, many innovations appeared. One of them is fluidized bed chlorination, “Titanium tetrachloride is obtained by chlorinating oxidized concentrate in the presence of carbon. The crushed concentrate is heated with co*ke and chlorinated at 900-1000 c. The conventional static bed crossing not only limits the production rate but also increases the consumption of chlorine gas. The emergence of fluidized bed chlorination technology has greatly promoted the industrial production of titanium tetrachloride. In the fluidized bed process, chlorine gas itself ACTS as the fluidized medium, and the initial thermal requirements are met by adding oxygen to some co*ke and chlorine gas for combustion. The advantages of the technology include good gas-solid contact, efficient heat transfer, improved reaction rate, increased productivity, and improved material utilization. The optimal control of reaction temperature can also be achieved by using a computer-based process control system. Data shows that Japan increased production by nearly 50% using fluidized bed reactor (FBR) technology." In addition, in order to reduce the production cost of titanium, related personnel explored and studied many new methods of extracting titanium, including TiCl4electrolysis process, International Titanium Powder (ITP) process (Armstrong process), FFC-Cambridge process, Pre-reduction molding process (PRP), Materials & Electrochemical Research (MER) process.

Although the technology continues to improve, there is one condition that remains constant throughout the smelting process, which is temperature. As you can see, the whole process is done at high temperatures. There is no information about the fuel that used to heat the vacuum, but I presume the fuel used is coal. The primary metal manufacturing process consumes the most energy in the entire treatment of ilmenite because this process changes the chemistry of the substance. It takes about 60MJ of energy to make one pound of titanium sponge. In 2010, the energy used to make titanium in the United States is about 4494.538x106MJ. That seems like a lot, but in fact 2616.539x105MJ is losses. It can be seen that, even in the 21st century with the rapid development of science and technology, energy efficiency is still very low.

After getting titanium through the Kroll process, the next step is to make it into a card. Before that, transportation became an inevitable part of energy consumption. Raw material processing factories are often built where the raw material is, because the ore mined is so heavy and contains so much impurities that it is not rational to transport it over long distances. This means that titanium is often transported over long distances, and I haven't been able to find the information but I believe it is by land and sea. The process consumes a lot of gasoline and diesel, as does transporting ore.

The energy needed to process titanium into an Apple Card should be much less than it does to smelt titanium, because it does not require changing the chemistry of the material. I wasn’t able to find the information about manufacturing Apple Card, so I couldn’t calculate the energy needed. It is made from different material as other apple products, so I can't refer it to any other product.

Titanium is completely recyclable. So, apple will recycle your card if you don't want it anymore. I'm not sure exactly how they're going to reuse it, because apple didn't seem to release that information, they just said they're going to reuse its material. But what is certain is that we have to pack up an apple card and send it back to Apple, which is a process that cost. So, is it worth it? An apple card is 15 grams. I roughly calculated that it takes about 60MJ to make a pound of titanium, so the material in an Apple Card is probably less than 2MJ, but about 14MJ of energy is lost to produce a gallon of gasoline.

Through these researches, I think the use of titanium in a credit card is unnecessary, because credit cards don't need any physical properties of titanium. But I haven't found any information about the source of the Apple Card’s material, so from the perspective of energy consumption, it’s highly possible that Apple credit card is made of recycled titanium.

Bibliography

Condliffe, Jamie. “A New Manufacturing Technique Could Finally Make Titanium Cheaper.” Gizmodo, 26 February 2015. https://gizmodo.com/a-new-manufacturing-technique-could-finally-make-titani-1688151340, Accessed on 3 December 2019.

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Levi, Michael A., “Do Gasoline Based Cars Really Use More Electricity than Electric Vehicles Do?” Council on Foreign Relations, 26 October 2011, https://www.cfr.org/blog/do-gasoline-based-cars-really-use-more-electricity-electric-vehicles-do, Accessed on 3 December 2019.

“Some recent innovations in the Kroll process of titanium sponge“ Bull. Mater. Sci., Vol. 16, No. 6, December 1993, pp. 433-451. © Printed in India. https://www.ias.ac.in/article/fulltext/boms/016/06/0433-0451, Accessed on 3 December 2019.

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“Bandwidth Study on Energy Use and Potential Energy Savings Opportunities in U.S. Titanium Manufacturing” U.S. Department of Energy, September 2017, https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2017/12/f46/Titanium_bandwidth_study_2017.pdf Accessed on 3 December 2019.

MacDonald, Jay. “Are credit cards recyclable? It’s complicated.” CreditCards, 8 November 2017, https://www.creditcards.com/credit-card-news/are-credit-cards-recyclable.php. Accessed on 3 December 2019.

Tsao, Paul. Kerry D. Brown. “Payment card manufacturing technology.” Google Patents. 18 September 2012. https://patents.google.com/patent/US20060016521A1/en. Accessed on 3 December 2019.

Hanusiak, William. Jerry Fields, Vincent Hammond, Robert Grabow. “Method for manufacturing titanium alloy wire with enhanced properties.” Google Patents. 26 January 2006. https://patents.google.com/patent/US20060016521A1/en. Accessed on 3 December 2019.

Huilgol, Mahit. “Apple Card is Made up of 90% Titanium and 10% Aluminum Alloy.” iPhonehacks, 3 September 2019. http://www.iphonehacks.com/2019/09/apple-card-materials-construction.html. Accessed on 3 December 2019.

Abigail Wang

Cogdell

DES 40A Fall 2019

4 December 2019

Analysis of Apple Credit Card’s Waste and Emissions

In an era of consumerism, credit cards have taken over paper money in most cities, and while it may seem as though credit cards are more sustainable, the production from cradle to grave has an impact on our environment. Apple is one of the newest companies to introduce its own credit card, manufactured utilizing titanium, for durability, aesthetic, and security. For titanium, most of the waste and emissions that are created are during the mining, purification, and refining stages (Nuss & Eckelman 2014).Although the titanium production utilized to make the Apple credit card reuses many raw materials, the processes of mining, purification and refining release harmful gases with damaging impacts on the environment in its lifecycle.

Mining Raw Materials:

The process of creating titanium starts with the extraction of raw materials through mining (How Products are Made 2019) which has detrimental effects on the environment.Titanium is made up of the minerals rutile, ilmenite,and leucoxene. Rutile, ilmenite, and leucoxene are mined from “open pits with a suction bucket wheel and the unwanted materials are separated by gravity in a wet spiral concentrator(Seagle 2019).”Next, the waste materials are further separated through the processes of electrical and magnetic properties(Seagle 2019). These processes that occur during mining for raw materials have negative impacts.“Mining industries are harmful for air, land, water, human health and biodiversity (Farjana, Huda, & Mahmud 2018).” Mining the raw materials like ilmenite releases radioactive elements that disrupt the natural habitat of the area and those living in it.Other effects include radiation hazards through the process of ionizing radiation. Additionally, there are issues of groundwater pollution from the runoff from the mines, transporting the minerals with heavy vehicles, and “dredging operations in fragile coastal areas and clearing of forests (Farjana, Huda, & Mahmud 2018).”

Purification and Refining:

The next step in titanium production is purification and refining which have varying environmental impacts depending on the raw materials and methods chosen. In Europe the main process of titanium production is the sulphate process, which negatively impacts the environment, although it has some co-products that can be utilized. The sulphate process is utilized for ilmenite, which results in byproducts of “acid and impurities [being] discharged into water (Reck & Richards 1997).”Because of the acids and impurities being released as liquid waste, this often requires the treatment of water after to halve the amount harmful emissions. In coastal productions using the sulphate process they dump sulfuric acid into the ocean or waterways. “Although the alkaline sea water buffers and neutralizes the dilute acidic waste, dumping sulfuric acid causes a sudden drop in the pH value of the receiving water and reduces the oxygen content of the water, thereby decimating marine life (Lane, 1991).” The sulphate process of producing titanium typically produces more waste products than the chlorine process, although much of it is unharmful and can even be made into viable co-products (Reck & Richards 1997).

Another, titanium production process is the chloride process, which is mainly used in the U.S., which has different detrimental effects on the environment. For purification of rutile it requires cleaning using chlorine which has caused damage to the environment as it is toxic, and affects the environment and ecosystems (Farjana, Huda, & Mahmud 2018).Rutile also releases radioactive like “radionuclides, metals, rare-earth elements, and dust (Farjana, Huda, & Mahmud 2018).”“Although most of the chlorine in the chloride process is recycled, that reacts with the impurities is discharged as metal chlorides.These metal chlorides are either disposed as is, or neutralised and landfilled (Reck & Richards 1997).” Even though the chlorides are landfilled they are used to rehabilitate disused mine sites (Reck & Richards 1997) so they are not entirely wasted.

Recycling:

Titanium can be recycled and repurposed to make new products, this process requires transportation of titanium to recycling plants which releases carbon dioxide. Recycling centers for titanium specifically are not abundant and would require travel and transportation to get to.Additionally, the repurposing of the titanium scraps and reshaping of the material expels carbon dioxide from the machinery used.

Maintenance:

In terms of maintenance the Apple credit card is durable and strong, preventing the need for upkeep or replacement. Apple has written an article advising customers on how to maintain their Apple credit card. They recommend keeping the card away from abrasive objects and magnets that might demagnetize the strip. They reassure users that the card will likely not be lost or damaged because it is made of titanium (Apple 2019). Choosing to utilize titanium, prevents the need for users to constantly replace the card from wear and tear. Additionally, if the card is stolen another person would be unable to use the card as it has no numbers or security pin on it and works through Apple’s face ID technology (Apple 2019).This security prevents the card from being stolen as frequently, which would also cause a need for replacement.

Best Practices:

The type of choices and regulations of companies producing titanium can greatly change the environmental damages done throughout production. Several of the wastes and emissions produced in titanium production can be utilized to create “co-products (Reck & Richards 1997).”For example the iron salts produced during sulphate or chloride processes can be used for “water treatment chemicals, soil conditioners, fertilizers, and animal feed supplements (Reck & Richards 1997).”Carbon dioxide from waste acid neutralization can used in beverage and brewing industries (Reck & Richards 1997). Sodium hypochlorite that is used in gas cleaning of chloride plants can be repurposed as effluent treatment and bleach (Reck & Richards 1997). It is important to note that this recycling and reuse of coproducts produced or utilized during the production of titanium can only be successful and beneficial if there is a market for the coproducts.

However, this analysis of waste and emissions of the titanium Apple credit card is limited in that Apple has provided very little information on their choices for titanium production. It can be assumed that as an American company, that Apple utilizes the U.S. process of producing titanium, through the chloride process. In the U.S. there are no regulations or best practices for producing titanium, whereas in Europe they have EU standards of discarding waste during production. Having further transparency surrounding the production of the Apple credit card would give the public more opportunity to hold the company accountable to sustainable practices in the development of their credit card.

Conclusions:

The production of titaniums environmental impact is very dependent on the decisions and values of whoever is producing the product. With limited information surrounding the production of the Apple credit card the waste and emissions produced could greatly vary in scale.

Mining for the raw materials utilized to make titanium creates the largest environmental impact, as mining destroys ecosystems and emissions such as carbon dioxide and run off impact the ground water and habitats around the mine.Refining and processing rutile used to produce titanium also impacts the environment as it requires chlorine, which is toxic to the environment.

Although certain damages to the environment are unavoidable, waste products can be repurposed and recycled if the producers are upholding a more sustainable practice (Reck & Richards 1997).

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