Metallurgy of Pure Metals

Metallurgy of pure metals is concerned with the refining and preparation of high-purity substances, with special emphasis not only on the high degree of chemical purity attainable by chemical or physical methods (hydrometallurgy, sorption, extraction, crystallisation from aqueous solutions, electrolysis) and also by pyrometallurgical methods (crystallisation from melts, evaporation, condensation and transport reactions, electrotransfer, diffusion separation of substances, removal of gases from metals, and vacuum refining of metals). The main material parameter which is in fact a measure of the separation of impurities during crystallisation processes is the distribution coefficient. Special attention is given in the book to the determination of this coefficient, its properties and correlation with the proton number. An appendix contains the values of distribution coefficients and binary diagrams, mainly for copper, aluminium, iron and its transformation, selected noble, refractory, radioactive metals, lanthanides, and semiconductors.