1. EXTRACTING METAL FROM ITS
ORES
Chemistry Holiday Homework

2. CONTENTS
• What Are Ores ?
• Metal Ores
• How To Extract Metals From Ores ?
• Reduction Of Metal Ores
• Effects On Environment

3. WHAT ARE ORES ?
• An ore is any naturally-
occurring source of a metal
that you can economically
extract the metal from.
• Aluminium, for example, is the
most common metal in the
Earth's crust, occurring in all
sorts of minerals.
An Ore

4. METAL ORES
• Metals are usually found in ores
containing mineral.
• They are combined with Oxygen or
Sulphur to form Oxides or Sulphides.
• Sulphide Ores are converted to Oxides
by heating them in air (called roasting)
• Eg : Zinc Sulphide to Zinc Oxide
Zinc Zinc Sulphur
Sulphide Oxygen
Oxide Dioxide
ZnS (s) 1 ½ O2 (g) ZnO (s) SO2 (g)

5. HOW TO EXTRACT METALS FROM
ORES ?
• To obtain a metal , it’s ore , a reducing
agent is used to remove the Oxygen , in a
reduction reaction .
• Examples of some reducing agents :
Made from
An impure form of Methane and
carbon Water

6. REDUCTION OF METAL ORES
• Iron , Manganese And Copper
 Carbon and Carbon monoxide
are the reducing agents in the
extraction of Fe , Mn & Cu
 These are cheap because coke
can be used which is cheaply
produced by heating coal in
absence of air
 Extraction of Iron is done in a
blast furnace which reaches
temperatures of 2000K

7. Haematite Fe2O3(s)
Carbon
3CO (g)
Monoxide
Iron 2Fe(I)
Carbon 3 CO2
Dioxide

8. Manganese is produced by the reduction
of its Oxide with Carbon.
2MnO(s) C(s) 2MnI(s) CO2(g)
 Copper used to be produced this way but
nowadays some ores are converted into
solutions containing Cu2+ ions.
 The copper is extracted by reducing with
scrap iron

9.  This is greener as no CO2 is produced
and scra p iron is cheap and readily
available
 Also , solution can be made from low
grade ore so it is readily available

10. • Extracting O ther Metals
 Some metals can’t be extracted using carbon
reduction such as Aluminium , Titanium , and
Tungsten.
 Aluminium cannot be extracted because it is
more reactive than metals.
 Titanium and Tungsten also can’t because they
will form a metal carbide which would make the
metal brittle.

11. • Extraction Of Aluminium
 Aluminium is extracted from purified
bauxite ore (mainly Al2O3)
 Oxide is dissolved in molten cryolite
, which forms a solution which melts at
around 1240K (Al2O3 melts at 2435K)
 Therefore less energy is required

12.  Alumi nium is produced at negative
electrode
 Oxygen is produced at positive electrode
 This gives us an equation :
Al2O3(I) 2Al(I) 1 ½ O(g)

13. • Extraction Of Titanium
 As Titanium can’t be reduced by Carbon it
is reduced by Sodium or Magnesium.
 It is an expensive process as Titanium
Oxide is first converted to Titanium
Chloride by reacting it with coke and
Chlorine at 1173K

14.  Titanium Chloride is then reduced by
Sodium or Magnesium int o Titanium under
an inert argon atmosphere at 1300K

15. • Extraction Of Tungsten
 Tungsten is extracted from it’s Oxide ,
WO3 by redu ction with H2 at high temp.
 However , there is some risk as H2 is a
flammable gas , so using it as a reducing
agent is a last resort

16. EFFECTS ON ENVIRONMENT
• Recycling scrap metals has many
environmental and economic advantage.
• It reduces the amount of scrap metal in
landfill and it has already been extracted
from its ore so energy is not required
again.

17. THANK
YOU