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Leaching is a process widely used in extractive metallurgy where ore is treated with chemicals to convert the valuable metals within the ore, into soluble salts while the impurity remains insoluble. These can then be washed out and processed to give the pure metal; the materials left over are commonly known as tailings.
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 ...
Metals in the middle of the reactivity series, such as iron, will react with acids such as sulfuric acid (but not water at normal temperatures) to give hydrogen and a metal salt, such as iron(II) sulfate: Fe (s) + H 2 SO 4 (l) → FeSO 4 (aq) + H 2 (g) There is some ambiguity at the borderlines between the groups.
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.
Fluxless brazing of copper alloys can be done with self-fluxing filler metals. Such metals contain an element capable of reaction with oxygen, usually phosphorus. A good example is the family of copper-phosphorus alloys. [citation needed]
The chemical reaction for the dissolution of gold, the "Elsner equation", follows: 4 Au + 8 NaCN + O 2 + 2 H 2 O → 4 Na[Au(CN) 2] + 4 NaOH. Potassium cyanide and calcium cyanide are sometimes used in place of sodium cyanide. Gold is one of the few metals that dissolves in the presence of cyanide ions and oxygen.
The metal ore is either distilled in an electrolyte or acid solution, then magnetically deposited onto a cathode plate (electrowinning); or smelted then melted using an electric arc or plasma arc furnace (electrothermic reactor). [7] Another major difference in non-ferrous extraction is the greater emphasis on minimizing metal losses in slag.
Its high reactivity toward trace amounts of water and other metal oxides presented challenges. Significant success came with the use of calcium as a reductant, but the resulting mixture still contained significant oxide impurities. [ 6 ]