Aluminothermic reaction

Aluminothermic reactions are exothermic chemical reactions using aluminium as the reducing agent at high temperature. The process is industrially useful for production of alloys of iron.^[1] The most prominent example is the thermite reaction between iron oxides and aluminium to produce iron itself:

Fe₂O₃ + 2 Al → 2 Fe + Al₂O₃

This specific reaction is however not relevant to the most important application of aluminothermic reactions, the production of ferroalloys. For the production of iron, a cheaper reducing agent, coke, is used instead via the carbothermic reaction.