Skip to main content
Idaho Harvester home, Baby Joe Vandal logo
Special Collections and Archives, University of Idaho Library home
Featured Image

Smelting

Mining Monday

Tags: mining
Series: Mining Monday

Last week, we learned about milling mineral ore. This week, we’ll look at what happens after minerals have been milled.

These photos show liquid silver being poured out and eventually turned into silver bars. This process is conducted through smelting: a refining and purifying process ”by which a metal is obtained … from its ore by heating beyond the melting point, ordinarily in the presence of oxidizing agents, such as air, or reducing agents, such as coke.”1 Since raw ore is pretty useless for building and powering technology, smelting allows miners to take raw ore that they’ve extracted from the Earth and turn it into a usable product that can be used to build and power all sorts of technology!

Mining photo [6]
Mining photo [6]
Mining photo [7]
Mining photo [7]

Sources

Photos courtesy of George W. Tabor Photographs, University of Idaho Special Collections and Archives

Have Feedback on this post or the site?

Send us your thoughts!