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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 .
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 metallurgy, refining consists of purifying an impure metal. It is to be distinguished from other processes such as smelting and calcining in that those two involve a chemical change to the raw material, whereas in refining the final material is chemically identical to the raw material.
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.
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
Zinc smelting is the process of converting zinc concentrates (ores that contain zinc) into pure zinc. Zinc smelting has historically been more difficult than the smelting of other metals, e.g. iron , because in contrast, zinc has a low boiling point .
One important furnace application, especially in iron and steel production, is smelting, where metal ores are reduced under high heat to separate the metal content from mineral gangue. The heat energy to fuel a furnace may be supplied directly by fuel combustion or by electricity. Different processes and the unique properties of specific metals ...
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 ...