smelting: Quick Facts

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Photos and Videos

Molten copper pours from a large industrial furnace into rectangular molds at a copper smelting facility, with glowing metal and industrial equipment visible.

Electrolytic smelting

Follow copper from green rock in open-pit mines to smelting, conversion, and refining into anode plates

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Topics

reduction smelting indirect smelting electrolytic smelting direct smelting bloomery process smelting reduction Hall-Héroult process Mitsubishi process top-blown rotary converter process Noranda process tempering quenching

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Key People

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Abraham Darby

British ironmaster

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Dud Dudley

English ironmaster

Georgius Agricola.

Georgius Agricola

German scholar and scientist

Gayley, James

James Gayley

American metallurgist

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Johan Gottlieb Gahn

Swedish mineralogist

James Watt as a young man, c1769. Scottish engineer and instrument maker. Invented the modern steam engine which became the main source of power in Britain's textile mills. His engine had a separate condenser in which steam from the cylinder; (see notes)

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