Mineral processing for nano-scientists

Abstract

In the past centuries pyrometallurgy was the only route to extract metals from ores and this required a large capital investment many countries could not afford to raise. This situation encouraged marketing of concentrates. Today, metallurgists have the option to use the hydrometallurgical route to process ores and concentrates at a reasonable capital investment. This opened the way to the possibility of processing ores locally. When need arises to increase production new units can be added economically. This is not possible with pyrometallurgical processes because one large furnace is more economical than a number of small furnaces with the same capacity due to heat radiation losses. In summary, mineral processing has made great progress in the past thirty years but there are still some standing problems that need to be solved.