lead processing

Introduction

      preparation of the ore for use in various products.

      Lead (Pb) is one of the oldest metals known, being one of seven metals used in the ancient world (the others are gold, silver, copper, iron, tin, and mercury). Its low melting point of 327° C (621° F), coupled with its easy castability and softness and malleability, make lead and lead alloys especially suitable for a wide range of cast products, including battery grids and terminals, counterweights, plumbing components, and type metal. With a specific gravity of about 11.35 grams per cubic centimetre, lead is the densest of the common metals, except for gold; this makes it a good shield against X rays and gamma radiation. Its combination of density and softness make it an excellent barrier to sound. Compared with other metals, lead is a poor conductor of heat and electricity, although it has excellent corrosion resistance when it can form an insoluble protective coating on its surface. The metal has a face-centred cubic crystal lattice structure.

      Approximately 30 percent of all lead consumed is in the form of lead compounds, such as oxides, tetraethyl and tetramethyllead, lead chromates, sulfates, silicates, and carbonates, and organic compounds. These lead compounds have been used in paste mixtures in storage batteries, in cements, glasses, and ceramics, as pigments in paints, and as an antiknock agent in gasoline.

History

      Lead has been mined and smelted for at least 8,000 years. This is confirmed by artifacts in various museums and by ancient histories and other writings, including the biblical Book of Exodus. Lead beads found in what is now Turkey have been dated to around 6500 BC, and the Egyptians are reported to have used lead along with gold, silver, and copper as early as 5000 BC. In pharaonic Egypt, lead was used to glaze pottery and make solder as well as for casting into ornamental objects. The British Museum holds a lead figure, found in the temple of Osiris in the ancient city of Abydos in western Anatolia, that dates from 3500 BC.

      One of the most important historical applications of lead was the water pipes of Rome. Lead pipes were fabricated in 3-metre (10-foot) lengths and in as many as 15 standard diameters. Many of these pipes, still in excellent condition, have been uncovered in modern-day Rome and England. The Roman word plumbum, denoting lead water spouts and connectors, is the origin of the English word plumbing and of the element's symbol, Pb.

      Marcus Vitruvius Pollio (Vitruvius), a 1st-century-BC Roman architect and engineer, warned about the use of lead pipe for conveying water, recommending that clay pipes be used instead. Vitruvius also referred in his writing to the poor colour of the workers in lead factories of that day, noting that the fumes from molten lead destroy the “vigour of the blood.” On the other hand, there were many who believed lead to have favourable medical qualities. Pliny, a Roman scholar of the 1st century AD, wrote that lead could be used for the removal of scars, as a liniment, or as an ingredient in plasters for ulcers and the eyes, among other health applications.

      Many churches and major buildings constructed in the 15th and 16th centuries provide examples of lead employed as a roofing material and for water conveyance. Indeed, the stained-glass windows of many cathedrals and castles of this period were made possible by the use of lead cames that held the glass elements together in a magnificent unity of colours and shapes.

      In 1859 a French physicist, Gaston Planté (Planté, Gaston), discovered that pairs of lead oxide and lead metal electrodes, when immersed in a sulfuric acid electrolyte, generated electrical energy and could subsequently be recharged. A series of further technical improvements by other investigators led to commercial production of lead-acid storage batteries by 1889. The huge growth of battery markets in the 20th century (eventually consuming about 75 percent of the world's lead production) largely paralleled the rise of the automobile, in which batteries found application for starting, lighting, and ignition. Another prominent lead product was tetraethyl lead, a gasoline additive invented in 1921 in the United States to solve “knocking” problems that had become commonplace with the development of high-compression engines operating at high temperatures. Soon after reaching its peak 50 years later, the use of this lead compound declined in the United States as the installation of catalytic converters became mandatory on the exhaust systems of all American passenger cars.

Ores

      Of the more than 60 known lead-containing minerals, by far the most important primary ore of the metal is the lead sulfide galena (PbS). Galena often contains silver, zinc, copper, cadmium, bismuth, arsenic, and antimony; in fact, the value of the silver content often exceeds that of the lead, in which case it is deemed a silver ore. Other commercially significant lead-containing minerals are cerussite (lead carbonate) and anglesite (lead sulfate). These are known as secondary minerals in that they derive from galena through natural actions, such as weathering. Cerussite, for instance, is formed by the action of carbonate groundwater on galena, whereas anglesite is formed when galena is subjected to sulfate solutions generated from the oxidation of sulfide minerals.

      More than 95 percent of mined lead comes from these three ores. Ores of commercial importance may range from 2 to 20 percent lead or more, even though galena itself contains 86.6 percent lead. This seeming disparity is due to the fact that galena is usually found mixed with other minerals, such as the zinc sulfide zinc blende and the iron sulfides pyrite and marcasite. Consequently, the percentage of recoverable lead in ores is typically about 4 percent, and nearly 90 percent of primary lead ores come as a by-product of zinc and silver mining. More than half of the total lead refinery demand is met by the recycling of spent lead, mostly from reclaimed batteries.

      Significant deposits of lead ores are located in Australia, Canada, China, Mexico, Peru, Kazakhstan, Russia, and the United States.

mining and concentrating

      Once the ore is removed from veins (narrow channels) or lodes (roughly spherical deposits) in the Earth, usually at depths of about 60 metres, the ore is treated at concentrating mills. Here the ore is finely crushed, sometimes to particle diameters of less than 0.1 millimetre (0.004 inch), and then treated by one of several mineral concentration processes. Such processes are designed to remove as much as possible of the waste rock, known as gangue.

      Flotation separation generally is used for sulfide ores. In this process, the finely crushed ore is diluted with water and agitated violently with air in a tank to which 1 percent pine oil or other suitable chemicals have been added. The sulfide particles attach themselves to the chemicals, and, when the air is bubbled into the mixture, an oily froth containing most of the metallic constituents of the ore floats to the top while the mostly valueless gangue sinks to the bottom. Aggregation of the metallic concentrate is initiated in the flotation bath, where flocculation agents such as alum and lime help increase the average size of particles; xanthate is also added to the froth to help float the particles to the surface. The froth then flows from the tank and is dried. Lead concentrates shipped from the concentration mill to the smelter contain 40 to 80 percent or more lead, with varying amounts of impurities, of which sulfur (up to 30 percent) and zinc (up to 15 percent) are most common.

Extraction

Indirect smelting

      Before lead concentrate can be charged into traditional blast furnaces for smelting, it must be roasted to remove most of the sulfur and to agglomerate further the fine flotation products so that they will not be blown out of the blast furnace. Various fluxing materials, such as limestone or iron ore, are mixed with the ore concentrate. The mix is spread on a moving grate, and air is blown through at a temperature of 1,400° C (2,550° F). The sulfur, along with coke additions, serves as a fuel and is combusted to sulfur dioxide gas, which is usually recovered for the production of sulfuric acid as a by-product.

 Roasting fuses the remaining ingredients into a brittle product called sinter, which consists of oxides of lead, zinc, iron, and silicon along with lime, metallic lead, and some remaining sulfur. This material is broken into lumps as it is discharged from the moving grate. The prefluxed, lumpy sinter is then loaded into the top of a heated blast furnace, along with the coke fuel (see figure—>). A blast of air is admitted to the lower part of the furnace to aid combustion of the coke, generating a temperature of about 1,200° C (2,200° F) and producing carbon monoxide. This gas then reacts with the metallic oxides, producing carbon dioxide and molten metal. Nonmetallic wastes form a slag with the fluxing materials.

      When reduction is complete, the furnace is tapped and the lead drawn off to flow into drossing kettles or molds. At this stage, the semifinished product, 95 to 99 percent lead and containing dissolved metallic and nonmetallic (oxide and sulfide) impurities, is known as base bullion. The bullion is maintained at a temperature just above its melting point, about 330° C (626° F). At this temperature, the solubility of copper in lead is very low, so that the copper content segregates and forms a scum, or dross, on the surface of the bath in the drossing kettle. After this is skimmed off, more copper and other impurities are brought to the surface by stirring sulfur and lead pyrite into the bath or by agitating it with submerged air lances. These impurities are also skimmed off, and the remaining base bullion is refined to yield lead of commercial quality (see below Refining).

Direct smelting

      Indirect smelting in roasters and blast furnaces began to be replaced in the 1970s by several direct smelting processes conducted in relatively small, intensive reactors. These processes require neither the sintering of feed materials nor the use of metallurgical coke; also, they produce lower volumes of gas and dust that would require treatment with pollution-control equipment. In general, direct smelting can be divided into two categories: (1) submerged smelting, as in the QSL and Isasmelt processes, in which the refining reactions occur in a liquid (i.e., molten metal, matte, or slag), and (2) suspension smelting, as in the KIVCET process, in which the reactions occur between gases and solids.

      KIVCET is a Russian acronym for “flash-cyclone-oxygen-electric-smelting.” A three-part KIVCET furnace comprises the reaction shaft, waste-gas shaft, and electric furnace, all connected with a common settling hearth. It employs the autogenous (that is, fuelless) flash smelting of raw materials, with the heat-producing oxidation of the concentrated sulfide ore raising the temperature to 1,300°–1,400° C (2,375°–2,550° F), which is enough to reduce the oxidized materials to metal. In operation, the process involves the proportioning, drying, and mixing of the lead-bearing materials and fluxes, followed by their injection into the reaction shaft, where they are ignited by a heated blast of commercially pure oxygen. The smelted lead bullion and slag collect in the hearth, while zinc vapour undergoes combustion with carbon monoxide in the electric furnace to produce zinc oxide. Sulfurous gases generated by the smelting process are tapped from the waste shaft to heat steam and to produce sulfuric acid as a by-product.

      The KIVCET process appears to produce significantly less flue dust than other direct processes, and its furnace brickwork has a longer service life. However, its use of electricity rather than fossil fuel usually militates against its use for eliminating zinc from the slag.

      The QSL, or Queneau-Schuhmann-Lurgi, process treats all grades of lead concentrates, including chemically complex secondary minerals, in a refractory-lined reactor into which oxygen and natural gas are blown through tuyeres at the bottom. The “green,” or unroasted, charge is first oxidized in a molten bath by the submerged oxygen injection; this produces a flue gas carrying oxides of lead and zinc as well as a slag containing 80 percent of the zinc from the charge. Reduction of the metal oxides occurs when they contact carbon monoxide produced by the natural-gas injection. The concentrates employed in the QSL process are not briquetted or dried before being fed to the reactor. Moisture content is held to 7 to 8 percent in order to minimize dusting.

      In the Isasmelt process, a gas or air lance is brought in through the top of a furnace and its tip submerged in the sulfide concentrate. A blast from the lance produces a turbulent bath in which the concentrates are oxidized to produce a high-lead slag. This slag is tapped continuously and transferred to a second furnace, where it is reduced with coal. Crude lead and slag are tapped continuously from the second furnace and separated for further refining.

Refining

Refining of bullion

      To remove and recover remaining impurities from lead bullion, either pyrometallurgical or electrolytic refining is used; the choice between the two methods is dictated by the amount of bismuth that must be eliminated from the bullion and by the availability and cost of energy.

      The Parkes zinc-desilvering process is the most widely used pyrometallurgical method of refining lead bullion. As in smelting, the lead is first melted and again allowed to cool below the freezing point of copper, which crystallizes and, along with any remaining nickel, cobalt, and zinc, is removed by skimming. The lead mix then passes to a reverberatory “softening” furnace, where the temperature is raised and the molten lead is stirred. A blast of air oxidizes any remaining antimony or arsenic, both of which harden lead (hence the term softening furnace), and these are skimmed off to be recovered later.

      After softening, the lead goes to desilvering kettles, where small quantities (less than 1 percent by weight) of zinc are added. With stirring, the molten zinc reacts to form compounds with gold and silver, both of which are more soluble in zinc than in lead. The compounds are lighter than the lead, so that, on cooling to below 370° C (700° F) but above the melting point of lead, they form a crust that is removed and taken to a parting plant for recovery of the precious metals. The remaining zinc is then removed by reheating the molten lead to 500° C (1,100° F) and creating a vacuum over the surface. The zinc vaporizes, and the vapour is condensed as metal on the cool dome of the vacuum vessel, where it is collected for reuse.

      The Harris process of softening and dezincing is designed to remove impurities from desilvered lead by stirring a mixture of molten caustic salts at a temperature of 450°–500° C (840°–930° F) into the molten lead. Metallic impurities react with the chemicals and are collected in the form of their oxides or oxysalts.

      Lead bullion containing more than 0.1 percent bismuth can be purified by the Betterton-Kroll process, which usually follows softening, desilvering, and dezincing and involves treatment of the melt with calcium and magnesium. Bismuth unites with these metals to form compounds that rise to the surface. The compounds are skimmed off and treated for recovery of bismuth, a valuable by-product.

      The Betterton-Kroll process produces a refined lead with bismuth contents of 0.005 to 0.01 percent. When a refined lead of higher purity is required, or when a lead bullion high in bismuth has to be refined, employment is made of electrolytic refining. This process is costly, but it has the major advantage of separating lead from every impurity except tin in one vessel or one stage, and it does so without emitting lead-bearing fumes or gases. The bullion is cast into large plates, which are hung as anodes in electrolytic tanks where they dissolve. Pure lead is deposited on a thin sheet of lead that serves as the cathode. Impurities left behind can be recovered by many complex operations.

Secondary refining

      Secondary lead is lead derived from scrap. Accounting for nearly half of the total output of refined lead, it is a significant factor in the lead market because it is easily melted and refined and rarely becomes contaminated by impurities during service. About 85 percent of secondary lead comes from discarded automobile batteries. The imposition of stringent environmental regulations governing disposal of spent batteries has led to greater recycling efforts that will ensure the growth of this supply.

      The recycling of lead from battery scrap involves treating and separating the scrap, reducing and smelting the lead-containing fractions, and refining and alloying the lead bullion into a commercial product. It is usually conducted in reverberatory and blast furnaces at refineries devoted exclusively to handling secondary lead and lead alloys. However, some primary refineries also refine secondary lead; this has led to a growing use of rotary furnaces, which are batch kilns that are rotated during the smelting process.

      The bulk of secondary lead alloy recovered from reclaimed batteries and cable sheathing contains small percentages of antimony and other metals. After this antimony-containing secondary lead is refined, it is largely resold to battery manufacturers. Secondary lead containing tin is most often reused in the manufacture of solder, bearing metals, and other lead-tin alloys.

      Calcium-lead alloys can also be made from recycled lead. Antimony is removed by oxygen injection, and, after copper and other impurities are removed, the molten lead is cast into blocks, or “pigs,” weighing 50 kilograms (110 pounds) or more. The molten lead may also be pumped into an alloying kettle for production of lead-calcium alloys, with the optional addition of tin or aluminum.

      Secondary raw materials are usually processed separately. Sometimes, however, lead residues, sludges, or flue dusts are mixed with oxides from the battery treatment plant and processed together.

The metal and its alloys (alloy)

      Refined lead usually has a purity of 99 to 99.99 percent, but lead of 99.999 percent purity (known as “five nines”) is becoming more common commercially. At these levels, the grades of lead differ mostly by their bismuth content. With modern smelting and refining techniques, it is possible to reach these high levels of purity regardless of the nature of the raw material. Grades of very high purity (99.9999 percent) have been produced, largely for scientific and research purposes.

      While there are no international standards governing the various types and purities of lead, standards have been established in individual countries. In the United States, for example, lead that has been refined to a purity of at least 99.94 percent is designated corroding lead (the name derives from the process by which it was formerly produced, not from any characteristic of the metal). Chemical lead, the most frequently used grade after corroding lead, is lead refined to a copper content of 0.04 to 0.08 percent and a silver content of 0.002 to 0.02 percent. This grade has a significantly improved corrosion resistance and mechanical strength and is therefore highly desirable in the chemical industry (hence its name)—particularly for piping and as a lining material. Common lead is fully refined and desilvered lead, with low copper content; it is widely used wherever high corrosion resistance is not necessary. Acid lead, made by adding copper to fully refined lead, differs from chemical lead primarily in its higher bismuth content.

      Two other grades of lead are arsenical lead, containing about 0.15 percent arsenic, 0.10 percent tin, and 0.10 percent bismuth and finding use in cable sheathing, and calcium lead, containing 0.03 to 0.11 percent calcium, employed in lead-acid batteries and casting applications.

      Because the mechanical properties of pure lead are relatively poor, it is alloyed with other elements, particularly to improve strength or hardness. Lead and most of its many alloys may be readily fabricated by almost all commercial processes. Extruded products include pipe, rod, wire, ribbon, traps, and special shapes. Rolled products, which may range in thickness from foil some 10 micrometres (0.0004 inch) thick to sheets 5 centimetres (2 inches) thick or more, are used in many applications. These include corrosion-resistant equipment (particularly for handling sulfuric acid) for the chemical industry; roofing, flashing, waterproof membranes, and similar applications; in X-ray and gamma-ray shielding and in sound isolation, sometimes as a laminate in a plastic sandwich; and as vibration-damping pads or housings for many building and machinery applications.

Antimonial lead

      The most common and important metal alloyed with lead is antimony. Antimonial lead alloys usually contain from 1 to 6 percent antimony, but they may contain as much as 25 percent. Other components usually include tin, iron, copper, zinc, silver, arsenic, or traces of nickel. Because it has improved hardness and strength, antimonial lead has traditionally been known simply as hard lead.

      Antimonial lead loses strength rapidly at elevated temperatures, so that it is generally used in applications where temperatures do not exceed 120° C (250° F). By far its most important commercial application is as the cast metal for grids and terminals in lead-acid storage batteries, in which the antimony content ranges up to 8 percent with about 0.25 percent tin and small amounts of arsenic, copper, and silver. “Maintenance-free” automotive batteries are usually produced with 1.5 to 3 percent antimonial-lead negative plates and positive plates containing 0.04 to 0.06 percent calcium and about 0.1 percent tin. Other important lead-antimony applications include pipe and sheet, cable sheathing, and ammunition.

Bearing alloys

      Lead-based bearing alloys, also known as lead-based babbitt metals (babbitt metal) or white metals, are usually antimonial lead with widely variable additions of tin or copper (or both) and arsenic to increase strength. One such alloy, commonly used for railroad-car journal bearings, contains 86 percent lead, 9 percent antimony, and 5 percent tin. Many alloys of lead and alkaline-earth metals, such as calcium and sodium, also are widely used as bearing materials. Leaded bronzes contain from 4 to 25 percent lead plus additions of copper and tin, and some copper-lead bearing alloys contain up to 40 percent lead. All these bearing alloys are sufficiently soft so that lubrication failure does not result in damage to the bearing.

Lead-tin

      Lead-tin alloys containing up to 98 percent by weight tin are used as solders. The strengths of these alloys increase with higher tin content, while the melting point is lowered to a minimum of 183° C (361° F) with a lead content of 38 percent. A half-lead–half-tin alloy is the most common general-purpose solder. Considerably lower tin contents, from around 5 to 30 percent, are used by the automotive industry for soldering radiator cores and for other applications. Tin contents as low as 2 percent are used in the canning industry. The electronics industry requires low-melting solders to protect heat-sensitive components, and so tin contents generally are around 60 to 65 percent.

      Terne metal, an alloy of lead and typically 10 to 15 percent tin, is used to coat steel sheet in order to produce a strong, corrosion-resistant product that is widely used for automobile gasoline tanks, packaging, roofing, and other uses where lead's favourable properties are sought but a reduced total weight is desired.

Lead-silver

      When solder joints are desired that retain their strength and other properties at higher temperatures than conventional lead-tin solders, use is made of lead-silver alloys that have melting points of about 305° C (580° F). The silver content of these soldering alloys ranges from 1.5 to 1.75 percent; tin is commonly added at a level of about 1 percent to inhibit intergranular corrosion.

      Adding 1 percent silver to lead-antimony alloys improves their performance as a grid material in batteries.

Chemical compounds

      There are hundreds of organic and inorganic lead compounds, including oxides, carbonates, sulfates, chromates, silicates, and acetates. Most of these are manufactured from high-purity corroding lead.

Oxides

       litharge, or lead monoxide (PbO), is one of the most important of all metal compounds. Containing roughly 93 percent lead and 7 percent oxygen by weight, it is manufactured by the oxidation of metallic lead in a variety of processes, each resulting in a distinctive variation in physical properties. Hence, it is available in many particle sizes and in two crystal forms.

      The largest single use of litharge, sometimes blended with red lead and other additives, is as a paste material for storage batteries. Very high purity litharge is widely used in the production of glass, including television picture tubes and computer video display terminals, where lead's shielding powers block otherwise harmful radiation. In addition, the inner portion of the common light bulb is made of leaded glass. Litharge is employed in the manufacture of enamels and in the production of frits, which are fluxes used to reduce melting temperatures in glass production. The lead in litharge imparts greater strength and brilliance to fine crystal glassware.

      Litharge is the key component in the manufacture of chrome-yellow and chrome-green pigments. It serves as an accelerator, toughener, and control ingredient in rubber production and as a catalyst in oil refining, where it breaks up some of the organic sulfur compounds found in petroleum.

      Red lead, or lead tetroxide (Pb₃O₄), is another lead oxide whose two most important uses are in paints and as an addition to litharge in storage batteries. It also has significant application in glasses, glazes, and vitreous enamels. Red lead is produced by heating litharge at a carefully controlled temperature, lower than that used for the manufacture of litharge. In this process, the litharge takes on more oxygen to form red lead.

      Lead dioxide (PbO₂) is an oxidizing agent used in the manufacture of dyes, matches, and rubber substitutes. Orange mineral (Pb₃O₄), having the same chemical composition as red lead but differing in colour and tone, is exploited in the manufacture of printing inks and pigments. Black oxide is a mixture of litharge and finely divided metallic lead and is primarily used in batteries.

tetraethyl lead

      Tetraethyl lead (Pb[C₂H₅]₄), usually designated TEL, was once a major industrial compound of lead because of its use as an antiknock agent in gasoline, but its use has declined since the mid-1970s owing to environmental restrictions. TEL is produced by melting pig lead and mixing it with sodium to form a lead-sodium alloy that is solidified and ground. This alloy is reacted with ethyl chloride to form TEL.

Silicates

      Lead silicates are considered to be the most versatile of lead chemical compounds in the ceramics industry. Three types are available commercially: lead monosilicate (PbO · 0.67SiO₂), lead bisilicate (PbO · 0.03Α1₂O₃ · 1.95SiO₂), and tribasic lead silicate (PbO · 0.33SiO₂). The silicates are used extensively in finely divided form for glazes or certain ceramic bodies and in granular form for glass, dry-process enamels, or in frit batches. The lead silicates also yield white pigments for exterior paints.

Carbonates

      The first white paint pigment was basic carbonate white lead [2PbCO₃ · Pb(OH)₂]. Generally known simply as white lead, it was widely used by the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans. Today it is produced by several different methods, including chemical precipitation from a slurry of litharge in water containing a small amount of acetic acid. Carbon dioxide gas is fed in carefully controlled amounts and rates into a closed vessel, under agitation, to produce finely divided white lead. Although it is no longer used as a pigment in paints owing to its role in lead poisoning, white lead is still used, though in decreasing amounts, in ceramics. Its decline in the latter use is due to its solubility in many acid solutions, including gastric juice, with possibly hazardous results. Its role has been partly superseded by the basic silicates, which are relatively insoluble in pottery-glaze frits and are therefore of minimal hazard to workers who handle glaze materials in ceramic plants.

Chromates

      Lead chromates—yellow, orange, and red—have significant application as pigments. The standard chromate, PbCrO₄, is made by precipitation from solutions of lead acetate or lead nitrate to which potassium or sodium bichromate has been added. Gradations of colour are obtained by varying the types of lead chromates used as well as by the process of manufacture.

Other compounds

      A whole series of lead compounds are used as stabilizers in vinyl plastics. As such, they enable the plastics to resist degradation from heat and light, especially out of doors. These stabilizers include certain basic sulfates and phosphites, complex silicates, and organic compounds such as salicylates and basic stearates.

      Among other lead compounds of interest are lead azide [Pb(N₃)₂], a standard detonator explosive whose efficiency is less affected by moisture than others and is virtually insoluble in water, and lead arsenate, derived from litharge and used as an insecticide.

Frank E. Goodwin Adolph L. Ponikvar

Additional Reading

Comprehensive and up-to-date information on many aspects of metallurgy, individual metals, and alloys can be found in convenient reference-form arrangement in the following works: Metals Handbook, 9th ed., 17 vol. (1978–89), a massive and detailed source prepared under the direction of the American Society for Metals, with a 10th edition that began publication in 1990; Herman F. Mark et al. (eds.), Encyclopedia of Chemical Technology, 3rd ed., 31 vol. (1978–84), formerly known as Kirk-Othmer Encyclopedia of Chemical Technology, with a 4th edition begun in 1991; and its European counterpart, the first English-language edition of a monumental German work, Ullmann's Encyclopedia of Industrial Chemistry, 5th, completely rev. ed., edited by Wolfgang Gerhartz et al. (1985– ). Ed. A broad review of lead history, mining, and production, with emphasis on uses, is presented in Lead Industries Association, Lead in Modern Industry: Manufacture, Applications, and Properties of Lead, Lead Alloys, and Lead Compounds (1952). Wilhelm Hofmann, Lead and Lead Alloys: Properties and Technology (1970; originally published in German, 2nd ed., 1962), is a comprehensive technical review. John S. Nordyke (ed.), Lead in the World of Ceramics: Source Book for Scientists, Engineers, and Students (1984), examines the properties and uses of lead compounds in one specific area. Michael L. Jaeck (ed.), Primary and Secondary Lead Processing (1989), presents papers of an international symposium on the subject. Thomas S. Mackey and R. David Prengaman (eds.), Lead-Zinc '90: Proceedings of a World Symposium on Metallurgy and Environmental Control (1990), is another collection, containing many papers on state-of-the-art technology for extracting and purifying lead, zinc, and some other metals.Frank E. Goodwin Adolph L. Ponikvar

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