Metals surround us always and everywhere. Today it is an integral part of many things that we use every day. It is enough just to look around the room you are in to understand that this is really the case.
Ever since school, we know that all these minerals are divided into two large groups - ferrous and non-ferrous metals. Which of them belong to which group, we have to find out. What non-ferrous metals exist on our planet?
What is black metal
The category "ferrous metals" includes iron and all its alloys that currently exist. In its pure form, iron is found only in research laboratories. Mainly it is steel.
This type of metal is formed by combining iron with carbon and adding additional elements that give the resulting metal certain properties necessary in a particular production (for example, magnetic).
Iron and steel
As a rule, in the production of ferrous metals, there are several standard phases: the extraction of ore and its processing in a blast furnace. After this, cast iron is obtained, from which subsequently receiveany kind of steel and iron alloys. The latter are more often used in heavy industry. Unlike them, non-ferrous metals are a softer substance with slightly different properties, they are used in a different area.
The composition of cast iron includes 93% iron and about 3-5% carbon, plus residual elements in small quantities. This material is rarely used for production because it is fragile. It can be found in the manufacture of certain types of pipes, valves or valves. But most of the iron produced (over 90%) is processed into steel.
The main types of steel that are made from iron are: carbon and low-carbon (hardened) steel, stainless, ferrite-chromium, chromium, martensitic-chromium, chromium-vanadium, alloy, nickel, tungsten, molybdenum and manganese steel.
Iron ore
In its pure form, this element of the periodic table in the earth's crust is contained in fairly small quantities (only 5.5%). But there is a lot of it in the composition of various iron ores.
The most significant deposits (the reserve is more than 30 trillion tons) are layers of ferruginous quartzites, whose age is more than two billion years. They are distributed mainly in places such as South and North America, Africa, India and western Australia.
What are non-ferrous metals
Another large group of metals, unlike the previous one, has moresoft properties, they are more ductile, have thermal and electrical conductivity, corrosion resistance and many others.
Non-ferrous metals is the combined name of all metals and their alloys, with the exception of iron. They can also be called "non-ferrous metals", which would be quite fair.
Non-ferrous metals are:
- gold, silver, platinum (precious metals);
- aluminum, titanium, magnesium, lithium, beryllium (light);
- copper, tin, lead, zinc, cob alt, nickel (heavy);
- niobium, molybdenum, zirconium, chromium, tungsten (refractory);
- indium, gallium, thallium (scattered);
- scandium, yttrium and all lanthanides (rare earth);
- radium, technetium, actinium, polonium, thorium, francium, uranium and transuranic elements (radioactive).
History of non-ferrous metallurgy
Non-ferrous metals are actively used today in engineering, chemical industry, construction and many other areas of production. Thanks to scientific and technological progress, the scope of this material is constantly expanding, and metal mining technologies continue to improve.
Over time, the use of non-ferrous metals has grown, which has led to the discovery of new elements and names. More and more metals began to be used in production. At the beginning of the 20th century, about 15 items were used, and after 50 years - twice as many. To date, more than 70 different metals are used, which is the majority among the currentfamous.
The growth in the level of demand for heavy non-ferrous metals was due to the growing needs of the military industry (for the production of ammunition), but a group of light ones was used in the aerospace industry.
The noble group has been widely used for the manufacture of jewelry and ornaments since ancient times. In the 90s of the 20th century, 78% of gold, 36% of platinum and 15% of silver were used for these purposes. If we take other areas where precious non-ferrous metals are used, these are electronic production (gold contacts in devices), automobile production (about 43% platinum), and silver was used to make film and photographic materials.
Features of non-ferrous metals
Each of the metals of this group has properties that largely determine its belonging to it. This also leads to the use of non-ferrous metals in many industries.
So, for example, most of them have a high heat capacity and thermal conductivity, which gives them the ability to cool quickly after welding. There is a downside to this: when working with metals such as magnesium and copper, you need to heat them up immediately before welding, and during the process itself, you need to use strong heat sources so that they do not cool.
Another characteristic property is the reduction of mechanical properties. In view of this, it is necessary to carefully work with them to avoid deformation.
Non-ferrous metals in the process of heating activelyreact with gases. Titanium, molybdenum and tantalum clearly demonstrate this property.
This group of metals can be used for a long time, but they need to be protected from oxygen, which destroys metals. To do this, the conductors, for example, are covered with a protective varnish. Previously, the metal lends itself to the priming procedure in two layers.
Copper ores
This type of ores is the most common in the non-ferrous category. This metal also has the widest area of use: construction, industrial energy, aircraft manufacturing, medicine, the production of efficient heat exchangers and many others.
Places of copper deposits are also diverse. Today, great importance is attached to poor disseminated ores (porphyrated type), which are mined in the vents of volcanoes. A chemical element was formed from a hot solution that came from magma chambers. A large reserve of such ore is located in North and South America.
Another type of copper ore is pyrite, mined from the bottom of the seas and oceans. Source - lands in the Urals.
And another huge source of such ores is copper sandstone (Chita region in Russia, Katanga in Africa).
Thus, non-ferrous metals are an indispensable material for the manufacture of many things that surround us.
