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Liquation is a metallurgical method for separating metals from an ore or alloy. The material must be heated until one of the metals starts to melt and drain away from the other and can be collected. This method was largely used to remove lead containing silver from copper, but it can also be used to remove antimony from ore minerals, and refine ...
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.
Smelting produces metals from raw ore, and involves adding chemicals to the ore and heating it up to the melting point of the metal. Refining is used primarily in the petroleum industry, whereby crude oil is heated and separated into stages according to the condensation points of the various elements.
The Pattinson process was patented by its inventor, Hugh Lee Pattinson, in 1833 who described it as, "An improved method for separating silver from lead" [citation needed]. It exploited the fact that in molten lead (containing traces of silver), the first metal to solidify out of the liquid is lead, leaving the remaining liquid richer in silver.
A separation process is a method that converts a mixture or a solution of chemical substances into two or more distinct product mixtures, [1] a scientific process of separating two or more substances in order to obtain purity. At least one product mixture from the separation is enriched in one or more of the source mixture's constituents.
Smelting involves more than just melting the metal out of its ore. Most ores are the chemical compound of the metal and other elements, such as oxygen (as an oxide), sulfur (as a sulfide), or carbon and oxygen together (as a carbonate). To extract the metal, workers must make these compounds undergo a chemical reaction.
Extractive metallurgy is a branch of metallurgical engineering wherein process and methods of extraction of metals from their natural mineral deposits are studied. The field is a materials science, covering all aspects of the types of ore, washing, concentration, separation, chemical processes and extraction of pure metal and their alloying to suit various applications, sometimes for direct ...
For the alkali metals, amalgamation is exothermic, and distinct chemical forms can be identified, such as KHg and KHg 2. [4] KHg is a gold-coloured compound with a melting point of 178 °C, and KHg 2 a silver-coloured compound with a melting point of 278 °C. These amalgams are very sensitive to air and water, but can be worked with under dry ...