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    Metal Extraction 1

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    Lusanda Payiya
    1. Metals are commonly found in Earth's crust as ores, which are mixtures of metal compounds and worthless materials. 2. To extract metals, ores must be concentrated to remove unwanted materials, then undergo processes like roasting, sintering, smelting, and refining to separate the metal. 3. Recycling metals is important to conserve resources and reduce waste, though it also has costs for collection, transport, and remelting.

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    Metal Extraction 1

    Uploaded by

    Lusanda Payiya
    118 views16 pages
    1. Metals are commonly found in Earth's crust as ores, which are mixtures of metal compounds and worthless materials. 2. To extract metals, ores must be concentrated to remove unwanted materials, then undergo processes like roasting, sintering, smelting, and refining to separate the metal. 3. Recycling metals is important to conserve resources and reduce waste, though it also has costs for collection, transport, and remelting.

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    Metal extraction notes

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    1. Metals are commonly found in Earth's crust as ores, which are mixtures of metal compounds and worthless materials. 2. To extract metals, ores must be concentrated to remove unwanted materials, then undergo processes like roasting, sintering, smelting, and refining to separate the metal. 3. Recycling metals is important to conserve resources and reduce waste, though it also has costs for collection, transport, and remelting.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    118 views16 pages

    Metal Extraction 1

    Uploaded by

    Lusanda Payiya
    1. Metals are commonly found in Earth's crust as ores, which are mixtures of metal compounds and worthless materials. 2. To extract metals, ores must be concentrated to remove unwanted materials, then undergo processes like roasting, sintering, smelting, and refining to separate the metal. 3. Recycling metals is important to conserve resources and reduce waste, though it also has costs for collection, transport, and remelting.

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    of 16

    Many metals are found in the earth's crust as ores.

    When the
    metal is dug up, a method must be used to separate the metal
    from the rest of the ore. This is called extracting the metal.
    THE OCCURANCE AND EXTRACTION OF METALS

    •Most metals are found as ores.


    •Chemically, an ore consists of minerals,
    (compounds of the metal), mixed with gaunge,
    (worthless earthy material). An ore is any
    naturally-occurring source of a metal that you can
    economically extract the metal from.
    CLASSIFICATION OF METAL ORES
    • Type 1 ores
    • These are ores of electropositive metals which are found as soluble salts. (Group I ores
    e.g nitrates and chlorides). The metal is extracted from the ore by electrolytic
    techniques.
    • Type 2 ores
    • These are ores of electropositive metals which are found as insoluble salts. (Some
    group II ores, e.g carbonates). They are extracted by electrolysis.
    • Type 3 ores
    • These metal ores are found as oxides and mixed oxides. A variety of extraction
    methods are used; e.g electrolysis and chemical reduction. C, CO or a more reactive
    metal can be used for reduction. Early transition metals e.g Ti, Cr and Mn fall into this
    group.
    CLASSIFICATION OF METAL ORES
    • Type 4 ores
    • These metal ores occur as sulphides and sometimes as oxides. During
    extraction the sulphides are 1st converted into oxides. The extraction methods
    used are electrolysis and chemical reduction. Hydrogen can also be used for
    chemical reduction in addition to C, CO and reactive metals.
    • Type 5 ores
    • Other metals can be found in the native or ‘free’ state. These are the
    unreactive metals, also called noble metals. Examples are Cu, Ag, Au and the
    Pt group metals.
    STEPS IN METAL EXTRACTION
    • Ore concentration- this means getting rid of as much of the
    unwanted earthy material as possible before the ore is
    converted into the metal.
    • It can be done by chemical means however, in many cases,
    it is possible to separate the metal compound from
    unwanted earthy material by physical means using ore
    flotation.
    ORE FLOTATION
    • The ore is first crushed and then treated with something which will bind to the
    particles of the desired metal compound and make those particles hydrophobic.
    "Hydrophobic" literally means "water fearing".
    • In concentrating copper ores, for example, pine oil is often used. The pine oil binds to
    the copper compounds, but not to the unwanted earthy material.
    • The treated ore is then put in a large bath of water containing a foaming agent (a
    soap or detergent of some kind), and air is blown through the mixture to make a lot
    of bubbles.
    • Because they are water-repellent, the coated particles of the metal compound tend
    to be picked up by the air bubbles, float to the top of the bath, and are allowed to
    flow out over the sides.
    • The rest of the rocky material stays in the bath.
    ORE FLOTATION DIAGRAM
    ROASTING
    • In this process the concentrated ore is heated in a
    controlled amount of air. For example, the ore, ZnS called zinc
    blende is roasted after ore floatation;
    • 2ZnS(s) + 3O2 (g)  2ZnO(s) + 2SO2 (g)
    During roasting the sulphide ore is converted into an oxide and
    impurities in the ore are driven off. In some metals the oxide
    ore produced can be further heated to produce the metal.
    [This is known as thermal reduction].
    SINTERING
    • This is where fine ore particles are agglomerated,
    which means reforming them into lumps of suitable size
    by a process called sintering.
    • The sintering process involves heating the ore
    particles until partial melting and fusion occurs.
    Smaller particles combine and fuse to form larger
    more easily handled particles.
    SMELTING
    • The process of smelting uses heat and a chemical reducing agent
    to decompose the ore, drive off other substances such as gases or
    slag and leave just the metal behind.
    • The reducing agent is commonly a source of carbon such as coke.
    • At high temperature, substances known as fluxes are added to the
    ore, their function being remove impurities by combining with the
    gaunge to form a liquid slag which sinks to the bottom of the furnace
    and floats on top of the molten metal.
    IRON SMELTING IN THE BLAST FURNACE
    • During iron extraction, coke and limestone are added together with the iron
    ores into the smelter.
    • The coke burns in oxygen to produce CO which acts as the reducing agent.
    • The limestone decomposes to produce quicklime, CaO which acts as the flux.
    • The iron ores which have silicon impurities are treated with the flux which
    reacts with the impurity, (gaunge) to form slag.
    • Fe2O3 (s) + 3CO(g)  2Fe(l) + 3CO2 (g)
    • SiO2 + CaO(s)  CaSiO3 (l)
    • (Gaunge) (flux) (slag)
    REFINING

    • In the electrorefining process, a block of impure metal


    is made the anode and a thin sheet of pure metal is
    made the cathode of an electrolytic cell containing an
    aqueous solution of the metal salt.
    • When electric current of a suitable voltage is passed,
    impure metal at the anode gets dissolved to deposit
    the pure metal at the cathode.
    ZONE REFINING
    This method is used to produce very
    pure metals on a small scale. One
    end of the metal is heated by a
    moving electric furnace. This end
    melts and the furnace moves along
    the metal rod slowly carrying the
    molten part with it. The molten part
    with all the impurities is transferred
    to one end. The other end is cut off
    and used as pure metal.
    RECYCLING USED METAL
    • Metals are non-renewable resources. This means once dug
    up they cannot be replaced. Hence, the supply will
    eventually run out. For example: it is expected that tin will
    run out within the next 15 years and copper in the next 40
    years! Therefore, the recycling of these two useful metals
    and others such as iron and aluminium is most important.
    • In recycling, metals are melted down before reshaping into
    their new use. However, this can be costly. Recycling
    companies will only recycle if it is economical!
    ADVANTAGES OF RECYCLING METAL

    Recycling saves on the high costs of extraction.


    Recycling prevents the waste of raw materials used in
    extraction.
    Recycling also cuts down on the metal waste we produce
    and dump, thereby preventing unsightly scrap metal piles.
    DISADVANTAGES OF RECYCLING METAL

    • The metal waste must be collected and transported,


    sometimes over long distances, to reach a recycling
    site. There are financial factors associated with the
    transport scrap metal.
    • The scrap metal has to be melted to be reshaped
    therefore there are energy costs associated with its
    melting.

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