pyrometallurgy

American  

[pahy-ruh-met-l-ur-jee] / ˌpaɪ rəˈmɛt lˌɜr dʒi /

noun

1. the process or technique of refining ores with heat so as to accelerate chemical reactions or to melt the metallic or nonmetallic content.

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pyrometallurgy British  

/ ˌpaɪrəʊmɛˈtælədʒɪ, -ˈmɛtəˌlɜːdʒɪ /

noun

1. the branch of metallurgy involving processes performed at high temperatures, including sintering, roasting, smelting, casting, refining, alloying, and heat treatment

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Other Word Forms

• pyrometallurgical adjective

Etymology

Origin of pyrometallurgy

First recorded in 1905–10; pyro- + metallurgy

Example Sentences

Pyrometallurgy, in which preprocessed waste material is heated to extremely high temperatures—often upwards of 1,000 °C—to burn away plastics and other unwanted materials and yield a mixed fraction of molten precious metals that can then be purified.

From Scientific American

But unlike pyrometallurgy, the heating is incredibly brief—typically a few hundred milliseconds.

From Scientific American

It's potentially a more sustainable method of recovering nickel than traditional techniques such as pyrometallurgy, which Dr O'Connor says is not an environmentally-friendly process.

From BBC

“We can’t recycle complex products like batteries the way we recycle other metals. Shredding, mixing up the components of a battery and pyrometallurgy destroy value,” Gavin Harper, a research fellow at the government-backed Faraday Institution in Britain, said.

From Reuters

Pyrometallurgy refers to the extraction of metals using high heat in blast furnaces, which analysts say is not economic.

From Reuters