Aluminum/Copper Radiators (Al/Cu): How to Spot, Prep, and Sell Them

Ask a new scrapper what an air conditioner coil is worth and most will say “aluminum.” They’re half right — and that half-right answer gives away real money. The fin-and-tube radiators in AC units, dehumidifiers, and refrigeration are a blend of aluminum fins on copper tubing, and yards grade them as their own category — “Al/Cu” — that pays roughly double clean aluminum precisely because of the copper you can’t quite see. Learn to spot one and you stop donating copper to the aluminum bin.

What an Al/Cu radiator actually is

Picture a block of thin aluminum fins with tubes threaded through them. On an aluminum/copper radiator, those tubes are copper — you can see the reddish tube ends (or U-bends) on the edges of the coil, while the mass of fins is dull silver-grey aluminum. That copper is the whole reason it’s a separate grade. Indicatively, Al/Cu runs around $1.30/lb versus roughly $0.55–0.85/lb for the clean aluminum grades — you’re being paid a blended rate that assumes a typical copper-to-aluminum ratio.

Where you’ll find them

Al/Cu coils turn up anywhere heat gets moved:

• Window and central AC condensers and evaporator coils — the classic source. A single window AC has a good-sized coil.
• Dehumidifiers, mini-fridges, wine coolers, water coolers — small condenser coils on the back or inside.
• Refrigerator and freezer condenser coils — the black-painted coil behind or beneath the unit (paint doesn’t change the grade).
• Mini-split heads and heat pumps — bigger coils, same construction.
• Some older car and truck radiators — see the caveat below.

The lookalikes — don’t get fooled

Two coils look almost identical to Al/Cu but grade completely differently, so check the tubes before you sort:

• All-aluminum (“microchannel”) coils. Many newer AC condensers use flat aluminum tubes and aluminum fins — no copper anywhere. If the tube ends are silver, not reddish, it’s plain aluminum, not Al/Cu.
• Modern car radiators. Most car radiators built in the last few decades are an all-aluminum core with plastic tanks — that’s an “aluminum radiator,” not Al/Cu. Only older (largely pre-1990s) radiators and many heater cores use copper/brass, which is yet another grade. When in doubt, look at the tube ends and hit it with the magnet test and a scratch: copper is reddish, brass is yellow, aluminum is silver.

The refrigerant rule — if it came from an AC or fridge

If you’re pulling the coil from a sealed cooling system, stop before you cut anything. Venting refrigerant to the atmosphere is illegal (US Clean Air Act §608), and snipping a sealed line to “let it hiss out” is venting. Either sell the appliance whole and let the yard handle reclaim, or have the refrigerant professionally reclaimed first. The full breakdown is in Is an AC Unit Worth Scrapping? — read it before you touch a live system. A radiator that’s already been legally reclaimed or was never part of a sealed loop is fair game.

Clean vs dirty Al/Cu

Like every grade, Al/Cu pays best when it’s just aluminum and copper — nothing else:

• Steel is the big one. End plates, mounting brackets, and support rails are often steel; enough attached steel and a magnet reacts, tipping the coil into a lower “dirty” grade or a deduction. Pull the brackets.
• Brass fittings and service valves on the tube ends are worth cutting off and selling as brass — they’d otherwise just be dead weight in the Al/Cu call.
• Plastic, foam, and mud — clear off the obvious junk.

A few minutes with a reciprocating saw or tin snips and a screwdriver moves a coil from “dirty” to clean and bumps the per-pound price.

Sell as Al/Cu, or break it down?

You’ve got two honest options:

1. Sell it whole as Al/Cu (~$1.30/lb). Low effort, and for most scrappers this is the right call. The blended price already pays you for the copper.
2. Separate the copper. Cut the copper tubing and U-bends out of the aluminum fin pack, and you can sell the tubing as #2 copper and the fins as low-grade aluminum. This only wins when copper prices are high and you have volume — hand-separating one coil is slow, fiddly work for a few extra dollars. At scale, or with a coil that’s mostly copper, it can beat the blended rate; for a single window-AC coil, sell it whole.

Whichever way you lean, put real numbers on it first. Set the preset to AC Unit and enter your local prices to see how the coil stacks up against the copper and steel around it:

The bottom line

An Al/Cu radiator is the easiest “free money” mistake to fix in scrapping: it looks like aluminum, so it ends up in the aluminum pile paying half of what it should. Two habits fix it — check the tube ends for copper, and keep every fin-and-tube coil in its own pile. Do that and you collect the copper premium the yard is ready to pay you.

Keep learning

• The whole aluminum picture: Aluminum Scrap Grades and the per-grade aluminum grade pages.
• Where the coils come from: Is an AC Unit Worth Scrapping?.
• Sort copper from brass from aluminum: Brass vs Bronze vs Copper and the magnet test.
• Pricing a bulk load of coils or appliances? The Scrap Lot Deal Analyzer.