Readings
Readings
No substance has been as important as metal in the story of man's control of his environment.
Advances in agriculture, warfare, transport, in the last 2000 years are impossible without metal. So
is the entire Industrial Revolution since the 1700s, from steam to electricity.
Nature entices man into the adventure of metallurgy by an initial gift of an almost magic charm.
Gold, the most attractive and precious of metals in every society, is also the easiest for primitive
man to acquire. Gold is bright, incorruptible, malleable, and appears in pure form in the beds of
streams. Nuggets of this gleaming substance must often have been kept and treasured. Pure gold
also has the quality of softness. It can be easily shaped by hammering, but this malleability makes it
useless for practical purposes.
2) A magic material (2)
Gold, the most precious of metals in every society, is also the easiest for primitive man to acquire.
Gold is bright, incorruptible, malleable, and appears in pure form in the beds of streams. Nuggets of
this gleaming substance must often have been kept and treasured. It can be easily shaped by
hammering, but this malleability makes it useless for practical purposes. It begins as it has
continued - a luxury item. The earliest surviving gold jewelry is from Egypt in about 3000 BC.
By that time people have long discovered an everyday use for another metal which exists in nature
in a pure form, and which can also be bashed into new shapes - with less ease than gold, for it is
much harder, but with more practical results. This metal is copper.
13) Metallurgy
Metallurgy is a domain of materials science and engineering that studies the physical and chemical
behavior of metallic elements, their inter-metallic compounds, and their mixtures, which are called
alloys. Metallurgy is used to separate metals from their ore. Metallurgy is also the technology of
metals: the way in which science is applied to the production of metals, and the engineering of
metal components for usage in products for consumers and manufacturers. The production of metals
involves the processing of ores to extract the metal they contain, and the mixture of metals,
sometimes with other elements, to produce alloys.
Extractive metallurgy is the practice of removing valuable metals from an ore and refining the
extracted raw metals into a purer form.
17) Toxicity
Toxicity cannot be evaluated with the ease with which a physical constant such as the melting point
or the boiling point of a substance may be determined. Solid, massive metals are not toxic, but their
vapors are. Vapors may be generated during melting, distillation, and welding. Compounds in the
gaseous state are toxic; some are more than others. For example, metallic beryllium pieces are not
toxic, but vapors of BeCL2 have demonstrated to be highly poisonous as well as vapors of metallic
beryllium. Mercury in the metallic state is a particularly toxic material. Being liquid at room
temperature, it has a high surface tension and when spilled on the ground it forms a large number of
extremely small globules, thus high surface area and increased vaporization.
19) Casting
Casting is a process by which a fluid melt is introduced into a mold, allowed to cool in the shape of
the form, and then ejected to make a fabricated part or casing. Four main elements are required in
the process of casting: pattern, mold, cores, and the part. The pattern, the original template from
which the mold is prepared, creates a corresponding cavity in the casting material. Cores are used to
produce tunnels or holes in the finished mold, and the part is the final output of the process. Casting
may be used to form hot, liquid metals or meltable plastics, or various materials that cold set after
mixing of components such as certain plastic resins, water setting materials such as concrete or
plaster, and materials that become liquid or paste when moist such as clay.
22) Oxidation
Oxidation must be done without melting the charge, which would destroy the required maximum
particle surface-oxidizing gas contact area. Stirring of the charge in some manner also ensures
exposure of all particle surfaces to the oxidizing gas. The only exception to this general procedure is
blast roasting (sintering), where the particle surfaces are partially melted and there is no stirring of
the charge. Different ores require different reactions at different temperatures, but almost always the
reducing agent is carbon. The list above is sorted in increasing temperature order, so iron is the
most difficult metal to smelt from the ones in the list (that's why historically iron smelting was the
last to be discovered). Alloys are usually designed to have properties that are more desirable than
those of their components.
23) Roasting
Roasting is a process of heating of sulfide ore to a high temperature in presence of air. More
specifically, roasting is a metallurgical process involving gas–solid reactions at elevated
temperatures with the goal of purifying the metal components. Often before roasting, the ore has
already been partially purified, e.g. by froth flotation. The concentrate is mixed with other materials
to facilitate the process. The technology is useful but is also a serious source of air pollution.
Roasting consists of thermal gas–liquid reactions, which can include oxidation, reduction, etc. In
roasting, the ore or ore concentrate is treated with very hot air. This process is generally applied to
sulfide minerals. During roasting, the sulfide is converted to an oxide, and sulfur is released as
sulfur dioxide, a gas.
24) Copper
Copper has been in use at least 10,000 years, but more than 95% of all copper ever mined and
smelted has been extracted since 1900. Most copper is mined or extracted as copper sulfides from
large open pit mines in porphyry copper deposits that contain 0.4 to 1.0% copper. Sites include
Chuquicamata in Chile and El Chino Mine in New Mexico, United States. According to the British
Geological Survey in 2005, Chile was the top producer of copper with at least one-third world share
followed by the United States and Peru. Copper can also be recovered through the in-situ leach
process. Several sites in the state of Arizona are considered prime candidates for this method. The
amount of copper in use is increasing and the quantity available is barely sufficient to allow all
countries to reach developed world levels of usage.
27) CODELCO 1
CODELCO (the National Copper Corporation of Chile) is a Chilean state-owned copper mining
company. It was formed in 1976 from foreign-owned copper companies that were nationalized in
1971. The headquarters are in Santiago and the seven-man board of directors is appointed by the
President of the Republic. It has the Minister of Mining as its president and six other members
including the Minister of Finance and one representative each from the Copper Workers Federation
and the National Association of Copper Supervisors. It is currently the largest copper producing
company in the world and produced 1.66 million tons of copper in 2007, 11% of the world total.
CODELCO owns the world's largest known copper reserves and resources. At the end of 2007, the
company had a total of reserves and resources of 118 million tons of copper in its mining plan
28) CODELCO 2
CODELCO (the National Copper Corporation of Chile) is a Chilean state-owned copper mining
company officially established in 1976.
CODELCO owns the world's largest known copper reserves and resources. At the end of 2007, the
company had a total of reserves and resources of 118 million tons of copper in its mining plan,
sufficient for more than 70 years of operation at current production rates. It also has additional
identified resources of 208 million tons of copper, though one cannot say how much of this may
prove economic. CODELCO's main product is cathode copper. The company is also one of the
world's largest molybdenum producers, producing 27,857 fine metric tons in 2007. It also produces
small amounts of gold and silver from refinery anode slimes, the residue from electro refining of
copper.