In this course, thermodynamic and kinetic principles governing metal production and recycling will be presented. Iron and steel making will be covered in greater depth followed by copper, aluminium and titanium production and refining. The importance of recycling metals and other by-products of metal production will be discussed as an integral part of metal refining flow sheets. Case studies dealing with stainless steel production and recycling of selected metals or devices will be studied.

This lecture course will cover:

• Introduction to metal production and recycling; statistics
• Routes to iron & steelmaking - blast furnace; thermodynamics of liquid iron alloys; dilute solutions; alternate standard states; interaction parameters; metal-slag equilibria; desiliconisation of iron; slag basicity; ionic theory of slags; desulfurisation; basic oxygen steelmaking; refining reactions in steel; dissolution of oxygen, nitrogen and hydrogen in liquid steel; deoxidation of liquid steel; electric arc furnace steelmaking; secondary steelmaking; stainless steel production 
• Extraction of copper; hydrometallurgical route and electrowinning of copper;  pyrometallurgical route; flash smelting; converting; and electrorefining 
• Extraction of aluminium; Bayer’s process; Hall-Heroult Cell for electrowinning aluminium from a molten salt
• Titanium production using the Kroll process 
• Recycling issues for the future and new technological opportunities - Case studies