Ores, metallurgy

Sources of transition metals Copper, silver, gold, platinum, and palladium are the only transition metals that are unreactive enough to be found in nature uncombined with other elements. All other transition metals are found in nature combined with nonmetals in minerals such as oxides and sulfides. Recall that minerals are mixed with other materials in ores. Metallurgy is the branch of applied science that studies and designs methods for extracting metals and their compounds from ores. The methods are divided into those that rely on high temperatures to extract the metal, those that use solutions, and those that rely on electricity. Electricity also is used to purify a metal extracted by high temperatures or solutions. 

Principal inorganic components detected by polaro-graphy are metallic species and certain anions. These applications will be described with respect to periodic elemental groupings. Determination of such analytes have been carried out in a wide variety of sample types such as water (waste and potable), foods (drinks, oils, meat, fruits, vegetables, and cereals), mineral ores, metallurgy, biological fluids (blood, urine), and environmental samples (sediments, soils, aerosols, and natural waters). 

The process of extracting a metal from the ore is called winning the metal. Refining is the purification of the metal that has been extracted from the ore. Metallurgy is the science and art of winning and refining metals, and preparing them for use. 

Key words Refractory gold ores, Metallurgy, Review... 

The abundance of indium in the earth s cmst is probably about 0.1 ppm, similat to that of silver. It is found in trace amounts in many minerals, particulady in the sulfide ores of zinc and to a lesser extent in association with sulfides of copper, tin, and lead. Indium follows zinc through flotation concentration, and commercial recovery of the metal is achieved by treating residues, flue dusts, slags, and metallic intermediates in zinc smelting and associated lead (qv) and copper (qv) smelting (see Metallurgy, EXTRACTIVE Zinc and zinc alloys). 

Process Chemistry. Manganese is combined with oxygen in its ores (see Table 3) and carbon is the most economical reducing agent for oxides. Therefore, the essential characteristics of manganese metallurgy is evident from examination of the interactions between manganese oxides and... 

F. W. Fraser and C. B. Belcher, "Mineralogical Studies of the Groote Eylandt Manganese Ore Deposits," Proceedings Mustralasian Institute of Minerals and Metallurgy tFo. 254, June 1975. 

Metallurgy includes not only the treatment of cmde ore and scrap, but also the processing of intermediates, ie, concentrates, and wastes, such as, slags, tailings, etc, for contained metal values. The various areas and subdisciplines comprising metallurgy may be summarized as follows ... 

Production of a metal is usually achieved by a sequence of chemical processes represented as a flow sheet. A limited number of unit processes are commonly used in extractive metallurgy. The combination of these steps and the precise conditions of operations vary significantly from metal to metal, and even for the same metal these steps vary with the type of ore or raw material. The technology of extraction processes was developed in an empirical way, and technical innovations often preceded scientific understanding of the processes. 

Refractory metals are associated with powder metallurgy because these metals are not easily melted. Therefore in smelting the ores, the metal is recovered in powder form rather than melted. Refractory metals are used mainly to produce filament wire for incandescent lamps. 

The treatments used to recover nickel from its sulfide and lateritic ores differ considerably because of the differing physical characteristics of the two ore types. The sulfide ores, in which the nickel, iron, and copper occur in a physical mixture as distinct minerals, are amenable to initial concentration by mechanical methods, eg, flotation (qv) and magnetic separation (see SEPARATION,MAGNETIC). The lateritic ores are not susceptible to these physical processes of beneficiation, and chemical means must be used to extract the nickel. The nickel concentration processes that have been developed are not as effective for the lateritic ores as for the sulfide ores (see also Metallurgy, extractive Minerals recovery and processing). 

Nonferrous Metal Production. Nonferrous metal production, which includes the leaching of copper and uranium ores with sulfuric acid, accounts for about 6% of U.S. sulfur consumption and probably about the same in other developed countries. In the case of copper, sulfuric acid is used for the extraction of the metal from deposits, mine dumps, and wastes, in which the copper contents are too low to justify concentration by conventional flotation techniques or the recovery of copper from ores containing copper carbonate and siUcate minerals that caimot be readily treated by flotation (qv) processes. The sulfuric acid required for copper leaching is usually the by-product acid produced by copper smelters (see Metallurgy, extractive Minerals RECOVERY AND PROCESSING). 

In metallurgy, hydrogen sulfide is used to precipitate copper sulfide from nickel—copper-containing ore leach solutions in Alberta, Canada, or to precipitate nickel and cobalt sulfides from sulfuric acid leaching oflaterite ores in Moa Bay, Cuba (120) (see Metallurgy, extractive metallurgy). 

In mineral technology, sulfur dioxide and sulfites are used as flotation depressants for sulfide ores. In electrowinning of copper from leach solutions from ores containing iron, sulfur dioxide prereduces ferric to ferrous ions to improve current efficiency and copper cathode quaHty. Sulfur dioxide also initiates precipitation of metallic selenium from selenous acid, a by-product of copper metallurgy (326). 

An alternative commercial form of a metallic mixed lanthanide-containing material is rare-earth siUcide [68476-89-1/, produced in a submerged electric-arc furnace by the direct reduction of ore concentrate, bastnasite, iron ore, and quart2. The resulting alloy is approximately 1/3 mischmetal, 1/3 sihcon, and 1/3 iron. In addition there are some ferro-alloys, such as magnesium—ferrosilicons, derived from cerium concentrate, that contain a few percent of cerium. The consumption of metallic cerium is overwhelmingly in the mixed lanthanide form in ferrous metallurgy. 

Developments in the metallurgy of copper or its alloys were mentioned in 1556 in De MetalBca where the process of copper ore was described by Agricola (see also Copper alloys). About that time, smelting operations commenced at Mansfield, Germany, and at the Swansea smelter in Wales. Both smelters employed successive oxidations and reductions to eliminate iron and sulfur. The process used in the Swansea smelter is similar to modern techniques. 

Copper ore minerals maybe classified as primary, secondary, oxidized, and native copper. Primaryrninerals were concentrated in ore bodies by hydrothermal processes secondary minerals formed when copper sulfide deposits exposed at the surface were leached by weathering and groundwater, and the copper reprecipitated near the water table (see Metallurgy, extractive). The important copper minerals are Hsted in Table 1. Of the sulfide ores, bornite, chalcopyrite, and tetrahedrite—teimantite are primary minerals and coveUite, chalcocite, and digenite are more commonly secondary minerals. The oxide minerals, such as chrysocoUa, malachite, and azurite, were formed by oxidation of surface sulfides. Native copper is usually found in the oxidized zone. However, the principal native copper deposits in Michigan are considered primary (5). 

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