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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 .
Thus, smelting, or refining, is necessary to reduce the compound containing the Ag + cation into metallic Ag and to remove other byproducts to get at pure silver. [1] The process, which uses mercury amalgamation to recover silver from ore, was first used at scale by Bartolomé de Medina in Pachuca , Mexico , in 1554. [ 2 ]
For sulfide ores, a different process is taken for beneficiation. The ore needs to have the sulfur removed before smelting can begin. Roasting is the primary method of separating, where wood was placed on heaps of ore and set on fire to help with oxidation. [6] [7] 2 Cu 2 S + 3 O 2 → 2 Cu 2 O + 2 SO 2
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
The initial product of copper smelting was impure "blister" copper, which contained sulfur and oxygen. To remove these impurities, the blister copper was repeatedly melted and solidified, undergoing a cycle of oxidation and reduction. [7] In one of the previous melting stages, lead was added.
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.
The HIsarna ironmaking process is a direct reduced iron process for iron making in which iron ore is processed almost directly into liquid iron ().The process combines two process units, the Cyclone Converter Furnace (CCF) for ore melting and pre-reduction and a Smelting Reduction Vessel (SRV) where the final reduction stage to liquid iron takes place.
Iron smelting—the extraction of usable metal from oxidized iron ores—is more difficult than tin and copper smelting. While these metals and their alloys can be cold-worked or melted in relatively simple furnaces (such as the kilns used for pottery ) and cast into molds, smelted iron requires hot-working and can be melted only in specially ...