roasting

…mining techniques and needed initial roasting before smelting. At the same time, they were more widely available than surface deposits, and there were sources in both central and western Europe—ores in Germany, Austria, and the Czech and Slovak Republics were exploited from the early 3rd millennium bce. This long initial…

…heat the washed ore (roasting, or dressing) not only to dry it but also to burn off sulfides and organic matter. Early practice involved heating the ore in intimate contact with charcoal to provide the essential reducing atmosphere, producing a metallic sponge made up of metal and slag. For…

…concentrate has been produced containing copper and other metals of value (such as gold and silver), the next step is to remove impurity elements. In older processes the concentrate, containing between 5 and 10 percent water, is first roasted in a cylindrical, refractory-lined furnace of either the hearth or fluidized-bed…

…for smelting, it must be roasted to remove most of the sulfur and to agglomerate further the fine flotation products so that they will not be blown out of the blast furnace. Various fluxing materials, such as limestone or iron ore, are mixed with the ore concentrate. The mix is…

…another, the matte may be roasted to produce high-grade nickel oxides; these are subjected to a pressure leach, and the solution is electro- and carbonyl refined. In electrorefining, the nickel is deposited onto pure nickel cathodes from sulfate or chloride solutions. This is done in electrolytic cells equipped with diaphragm…

The most important operations are roasting, smelting, and refining. Roasting, or heating in air without fusion, transforms sulfide ores into oxides, the sulfur escaping as sulfur dioxide, a gas. Smelting (q.v.) is the process used in blast furnaces to reduce iron ores. Tin, copper, and lead ores are also smelted.

As stated above, for those instances in which a metal-bearing compound is not in a chemical form that permits the metal to be easily and economically removed, it is necessary first to change it into some other compound. The preliminary treatment that is commonly…

The hydrometallurgical processing of uranium ores is frequently preceded by a high-temperature calcination step. Roasting dehydrates the clay content of many ores, removes carbonaceous materials, oxidizes sulfur compounds to innocuous sulfates, and oxidizes any other reductants that may interfere in subsequent leaching operations.

…electrolytic production of zinc, the roasting of concentrates is achieved in fluidized-bed roasters, in which finely divided and heated particles of concentrate are suspended in a rising stream of air. The sulfur content can be reduced to less than 0.5 percent, and a high-strength (10 percent) sulfur dioxide gas is…