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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.
Depiction of the patio process at the Hacienda Nueva de Fresnillo, Zacatecas state , Pietro Gualdi, 1846. The patio process is a process for extracting silver from ore. Smelting, or refining, is most often necessary because silver is only infrequently found as a native element like some metals nobler than the redox couple 2 H + + 2 e − ⇌ H
One ancient process for extracting the silver from lead was cupellation.This process involved melting impure lead samples in a cupel, a small porous container designed for purification that would aid in the oxidation process, while being able to withstand the heat needed to melt these metals in a furnace.
This same analytical process was applied to the samples of smelted silver in the form of Ancient Greek coins from the classical period of Greece in Ancient Athens and surrounding cities. [22] This showed that the Athenians minted their silver coins almost exclusively at the Laurion mines whereas the surrounding cities obtained their silver ore ...
In addition, the process allowed for greater amounts of the silver to be produced by Japanese mines, which had more efficient refining processes than their competitors. By the 16th century, Japanese mines were producing up to one third of the world's silver. [3] The Hai-Fuki-Ho method was eventually replaced by more modern methods of silver ...
The silver mines at Laurion were very rich [18] and helped provide a currency for the economy of ancient Athens, where the process involved mining the ore in underground galleries, washing and then smelting it to produce the metal. Elaborate washing tables still exist at the site which used rain water held in cisterns and collected during the ...
The use of cupellation, a process developed before the rise of Rome, would extract copper from gold and silver, or an alloy called electrum. In order to separate the gold and silver, however, the Romans would granulate the alloy by pouring the liquid, molten metal into cold water, and then smelt the granules with salt , separating the gold from ...
The pan amalgamation process is a method to extract silver from ore, using salt and copper(II) sulfate in addition to mercury. The process was widely used from 1609 through the 19th century; it is no longer used. The patio process had been used to extract silver from ore since its invention in 1557. One drawback of the patio process was the ...