Extraction Of Iron
Iron, perhaps the most important element to all civilization is also one of earth's most abundant. Like the majority of metal ores, iron ores are not pure compounds. Rather, most iron ore compounds are polluted with sand, rock and silica.
The process of extracting iron involves a number of steps.
The first step to concentrate the iron ore and remove its contents of silica.
To further remove any existing impurities, a complex process takes place in a blast furnace. The charge is where materials are placed into the blast furnace. These materials are: Ore, Limestone and Coke.
A burst of hot, oxygen enriched air is blown into the air-blast nozzle located at the near bottom
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The heat generated by this reaction increases the bottom of the furnace to a temperature near 19000° C. This reaction is represented in a chemical equation:
C(s) + O2(g) ® CO2(g) + heat
The carbon dioxide generated rises halfway up the furnace, where it reacts with the hotter coke. This causes the carbon dioxide to reduce into carbon monoxide. This reaction absorbs some heat and lowers the temperature of the upper part of the furnace to roughly 1300° C.
CO2(g) + C(s) + heat ® 2CO(g)
This carbon monoxide then reduces the iron oxide to a metallic iron, which is molten at the temperature of the reaction. This takes place in middle and upper parts of the furnace.
3CO(g) + Fe2O3(s) ® 2Fe(l) + 3CO2(g)
The limestone in the charge is to remove any existing silica left in the enriched ore. There are two steps in this process.
The first step is heating the limestone in the furnace to produce lime, CaO. This takes place in the middle of the furnace.
CaCO3(s) ® CaO(s) + CO2(g)
The second step in this process is when the lime reacts with the silica, resulting in calcium
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The term flux refers to a substance that cause mineral impurities in an ore to melt more readily. The melting process that takes place in the furnace is called smelting. In this process of smelting, the products in the furnace are separated into layers. In this way, the molten iron is the bottom layer and molten calcium silicate is the layer above it. Being that the molten iron is more dense than the molten calcium silicate.
The calcium silicate is a kind of slag, formed in a smelting process by the lime combining with the calcium silicate. As a slag, the calcium is easily separated from the more dense molten iron. This is done simply by tapping the slag with an outlet.
When cooled, the molten iron from the blast furnace becomes pig iron. It still contains a number of impurities; Sulfur, Phosphorus and Boron.
These lower the iron's tensile strength and make it more brittle. However, it has such impurities at much lower
The copper ions are transferred from the water where they are of a high concentr... ... middle of paper ... ... is likely to be placed and a thorough environmental impact assessment carried out to ensure that the processes do not cause undue environmental damageι. Finally governmental permission must be obtained before commercial activity can take placeι. References α - Article 1 from examination pack: Mining with microbes, John Merson. β - How hydrometallurgy and the SX/EW process made copper the "green" metal, William Dresher. γ - Article 2 from examination pack: Extracting copper from leaching solutions.
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CaCl2 + H2O + CO2
“In a blast furnace the iron oxides are reduced and the resulting iron is melted.” (“Blast Furnace System”)
the iron ore to iron. In the other cases of metals the most common way
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