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The blast furnace, used to produce pig iron from iron ore. These can be subdivided into: Cold blast furnaces; Hot blast furnaces; The bloomery, a precursor to the blast furnace that produces sponge iron from ore; The blowing house, a traditional furnace for smelting tin; The smeltmill, a traditional furnace for smelting lead
16th century cupellation furnaces (per Agricola). Cupellation is a refining process in metallurgy in which ores or alloyed metals are treated under very high temperatures and subjected to controlled operations to separate noble metals, like gold and silver, from base metals, like lead, copper, zinc, arsenic, antimony, or bismuth, present in the ore.
Smelting is a process of applying heat and a chemical reducing agent to an ore to extract a desired base metal product. [1] It is a form of extractive metallurgy that is used to obtain many metals such as iron , copper , silver , tin , lead and zinc .
Historically, the reduction of iron ore without smelting is the oldest process for obtaining steel. Low-temperature furnaces, unable to reach the melting temperatures of iron alloys, produce a bloom, a heterogeneous agglomerate of metallic iron more or less impregnated with carbon , gangue , and charcoal .
Extractive metallurgy is a branch of metallurgical engineering wherein process and methods of extraction of metals from their natural mineral deposits are studied. The field is a materials science, covering all aspects of the types of ore, washing, concentration, separation, chemical processes and extraction of pure metal and their alloying to suit various applications, sometimes for direct ...
These higher production costs made mining and smelting anything but the highest grade silver ores prohibitively expensive, just as the availability of high grade ores was in decline. [5] Bartolomé de Medina initially focused his attentions on learning about new smelting methods from smelters in Spain.
In operation, after the bloomery is heated typically with a wood fire, shifting to burning sized charcoal, iron ore and additional charcoal are introduced through the top. Again, traditional methods vary, but normally smaller charges of ore are added at the start of the main smelting sequence, increasing to larger amounts as the smelt progresses.
Pea-sized raw ore of metals such as iron, copper, lead, and even those containing precious metals can be melted in the cupola or blast furnace. Vannoccio Biringuccio describes how to separate metals and slag by pouring the melted ore contents from the furnace into a small pool then peeling off layers of slag or metal from the top as they cool ...