Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Smelting uses heat and a chemical reducing agent to decompose the ore, driving off other elements as gases or slag and leaving the metal behind. The reducing agent is commonly a fossil-fuel source of carbon , such as carbon monoxide from incomplete combustion of coke —or, in earlier times, of charcoal . [ 1 ]
This reduction of slag viscosity with temperature, increasing the flow of slag in smelting, is the origin of the word flux in metallurgy. The flux most commonly used in iron and steel furnaces is limestone, which is charged in the proper proportions with the iron and fuel.
A combination of molten lead and slag sinks to the bottom of the furnace, with a layer of the lightest elements referred to as speiss, including arsenic and antimony floating to the top of the molten material. The crude bullion and lead slag layers flow out of the 'furnace front' and into the 'forehearth', where the two streams are separated.
The downward flow of the ore along with the flux in contact with an upflow of hot, carbon monoxide-rich combustion gases is a countercurrent exchange and chemical reaction process. [ 3 ] In contrast, air furnaces (such as reverberatory furnaces ) are naturally aspirated, usually by the convection of hot gases in a chimney flue .
Metallurgy derives from the Ancient Greek μεταλλουργός, metallourgós, "worker in metal", from μέταλλον, métallon, "mine, metal" + ἔργον, érgon, "work" The word was originally an alchemist's term for the extraction of metals from minerals, the ending -urgy signifying a process, especially manufacturing: it was discussed in this sense in the 1797 Encyclopædia ...
The chemical elements can be broadly divided into metals, metalloids, and nonmetals according to their shared physical and chemical properties.All elemental metals have a shiny appearance (at least when freshly polished); are good conductors of heat and electricity; form alloys with other metallic elements; and have at least one basic oxide.
Helium has several unique qualities when compared with other elements: its boiling point at 1 atm is lower than those of any other known substance; it is the only element known to exhibit superfluidity; and, it is the only element that cannot be solidified by cooling at atmospheric pressure [29] (an effect explained by quantum mechanics as its ...
Except near the electrodes, where there are sheaths containing very few electrons, the ionized gas contains ions and electrons in about equal numbers so that the resultant space charge is very small. We shall use the name plasma to describe this region containing balanced charges of ions and electrons.