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Electric phosphate smelting furnace in a TVA chemical plant (1942) 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 .
A bloomery is a type of metallurgical furnace once used widely for smelting iron from its oxides. The bloomery was the earliest form of smelter capable of smelting iron. Bloomeries produce a porous mass of iron and slag called a bloom .
A water jacket furnace can be used to reduce non-ferrous oxide ores mixed with coke, to produce metal and slag. When smelting lead, the feedstock is lead oxide, coke and fluxes. When smelting lead sulphide ores, the ore is first sintered to form a lead oxide sinter. Lead and silver ores often occur in the same ore body.
A metallurgical furnace, often simply referred to as a furnace when the context is known, is an industrial furnace used to heat, melt, or otherwise process metals. Furnaces have been a central piece of equipment throughout the history of metallurgy ; processing metals with heat is even its own engineering specialty known as pyrometallurgy .
A blast furnace is a type of metallurgical furnace used for smelting to produce industrial metals, generally pig iron, but also others such as lead or copper. Blast refers to the combustion air being supplied above atmospheric pressure .
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.
During operation, fuel is placed in or on the hearth and ignited. A source of moving air, such as a fan or bellows, introduces additional air into the fire through the tuyere. With additional air, the fire consumes fuel faster and burns hotter (and cleaner - smoke can be thought of as escaped potential fuel).
Open hearth furnace workers at the Zaporizhstal steel mill in Ukraine taking a steel sample, c. 2012 Tapping open-hearth furnace, VEB Rohrkombinat Riesa, East Germany, 1982. An open-hearth furnace or open hearth furnace is any of several kinds of industrial furnace in which excess carbon and other impurities are burnt out of pig iron to produce ...