Pyrometallurgy is about liquid metal elaboration of certain purity and composition given, from ores or secondary raw materials. All of Eramet is involved in this type of extractive metallurgy. One can make the difference between the "burden preparation" (sintering, calcination) and the reactors, such as blast furnaces, electrical furnaces, converters, ladles or other more exotic processes used for smelting, reducing, refining or converting. The main ideas are to set up or modify these processes, often linked to the setting of new equipment, or their optimisation through the management of the processes, with the help of metallurgical or phenomenological models. The main targets are to reduce costs, improve the quality (cleanliness of the metal) or improve environmental performances.
Pyrometallurgy is mainly based on thermodynamics applied to metals, slags and gas, on materials and transfer sciences (thermic or in mass). We daily perform experimentation :
The numerical simulation is the other key tool, for the study of processes as well as for the scale changes (for example the conception of a pilot plant).
