Chemical Processing-A Wave Of The Future

Chemical processing is descended from alchemy, which developed our major lixivants. The profession might have done more if it had been less preoccupied with turning base metals into gold-a process that still hasn't been developed. Georg Agricola, over 400 years ago, gave us ten recipes for "aqua valens" to part gold and silver, and described cementation of gold and silver on base metals. His text stood for 200 years, by which time heap roasting, leaching and cementation were winning copper from pyrites at Rio Tinto and the Barba furnace was distilling mercury from the ores of Almaden.