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Metalurgia Extractiva Y Política Nacional, Fathi Habashi

Fathi Habashi

Should a country export its mineral wealth in form of concentrates or should it locally treat its ores to produce metals as final products? In the past centuries pyrometallurgy was the only route to extract metals from ores and this required a large capital investment many countries could not afford to raise. This situation encouraged marketing of concentrates. Today, metallurgists have the option to use the hydrometallurgical route to process ores and concentrates at a reasonable capital investment. This opened the way to the possibility of processing ores locally. When need arises to increase production new units can be added …