Mineralogy of Antimony Ores and Antimony Production: Comparison
Please note this is a comparison between Version 4 by Conner Chen and Version 3 by Conner Chen.

Antimony is ca metallassified as a critical/strategic metal. Its primary production is predominated by China via pyrometallurgical routes such as volatilization roasting—reduction smelting or direct reoid element having common oxidation states of 5+ and 3+. It is a lustrous silvery-white solid, which is quite brittle and exhibits a flaky texture.  Antimony is classified as a critical/strategic metal. Its primary production smeltingis predominated by China.

  • antimony
  • critical metals
  • extractive metallurgy

1. Introduction

Antimony is one of the medieval metals, and antimony-containing castings were found from 4000 BC in China. Metallic antimony was mistaken for stibnite until the early 17th century (1604) when Basilius Valentinus published a book titled “The Triumphal Chariot of Antimony” explaining antimony properties, applications, and winning methods. This is renowned as the beginning of human knowledge about antimony. Later in 1707, the French chemist Lémery published his “Traité de l’Antimoine”, which led to considerable acclaim for antimony.
The English word “antimony” is derived from the Greek words: anti [opposed] and monos [solitude], which means a metal that rarely occurs alone [1]. Native antimony has a strong affinity for sulfur and other metals such as copper, lead, and gold [2][3]. As a result, the development of extraction methods was very slow until the Japanese war in 1905. Its ability as an alloying element for lead, which could be used in the production of ammunitions that can penetrate armor plates, resulted in its wide usage during World Wars I and II, at which time China was the major producer by 30,000 to 40,000 tons of antimony per year [1]. Antimony use in military applications led to its classification as an important member of the “Strategic Metals” [4].
Antimony is a metalloid element having common oxidation states of 5+ and 3+. It is a lustrous silvery-white solid, which is quite brittle and exhibits a flaky texture. Natural antimony consists of a mixture of two stable isotopes that have atomic weights of 121 (57.25 wt%) and 123 (42.75 wt%); more than thirty radioactive isotopes of antimony are also known [3]Table 1 summarizes the important physicochemical and mechanical properties of antimony.
Table 1. Physicochemical and mechanical properties of antimony.

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