Smelting
use of heat and a reducing agent to purify metal from ore
Smelting is a process of applying heat and a chemical reducing agent to an ore to extract a desired base metal product. It is a form of extractive metallurgy that is used to obtain many metals such as iron, copper, silver, tin, lead, and zinc.
Smelting uses heat and a chemical reducing agent to decompose the ore, driving off other elements as gases or slag and leaving the metal behind. The reducing agent is commonly a fossil-fuel source of carbon, such as carbon monoxide from incomplete combustion of coke—or, in earlier times, of charcoal. The oxygen in the ore binds to carbon at high temperatures, as the chemical potential energy of the bonds in carbon dioxide (CO2) is lower than that of the bonds in the ore.
Sulfide ores such as those commonly used to obtain copper, zinc, or lead, are roasted before smelting in order to convert the sulfides to oxides, which are more readily reduced to the metal. Roasting heats the ore in the presence of oxygen from air, oxidizing the ore and liberating the sulfur as sulfur dioxide gas.
Iron ore is smelted in a blast furnace to produce pig iron, which is converted into steel.
Aluminium
Aluminium cannot be smelted like most other metals, such as copper or iron, because aluminium forms a very stable compound with oxygen, and the oxide has a melting point of about 2,072°C (3,762°F). Aluminium is more reactive than carbon, therefore carbon cannot smelt aluminum.
The public source identifies “Smelting” as use of heat and a reducing agent to purify metal from ore. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Smelting, heat and reducing.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2748405. The Library of Congress control number is sh85123636. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Smelting” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.