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Lead or Mercury, haifuki-hō or plata de azogue: the Environmental Dilemma in the History of Silver Refining
Asian Review of World Histories Pub Date : 2019-01-23 , DOI: 10.1163/22879811-12340048
Saul Guerrero 1
Affiliation  

In the sixteenth century the Spanish Empire would find itself owner and conqueror of the largest deposits of primary silver and mercury in the world, a geopolitical conjunction which would lead to the use of mercury at an industrial scale in the production of plata de azogue (silver by mercury) from silver sulfide deposits found in the Americas. Thus, two refining processes, the millennia-old two-stage smelting process based on lead and high temperatures, and the upstart based on mercury sine igne (without fire), came to share in nearly equal parts the aggregate global production of silver from the sixteenth to the final decade of the nineteenth century. These processes relied on the extensive use of two of the heavy metals most toxic to humans, and their anthropogenic emissions to the environment have caused impacts lasting over subsequent centuries. However, the successful use of haifuki-hō (smelting-cupellation process) in Japan to produce silver from silver sulfide ores with 0.2 percent silver content demonstrates that the extensive use of mercury by Spanish refiners in the New World was not the consequence of the geochemistry or silver content of the ores.



中文翻译:

铅或汞,haifuki-hō或plata de azogue:炼银历史中的环境困境

在16世纪,西班牙帝国将成为世界上最大的原银和汞矿的拥有者和征服者,这是一种地缘政治结合,将导致工业化规模的汞在plata de azogue(白银)生产中的使用。汞)来自美洲发现的硫化银矿床。因此,有两个精炼过程,一个是基于铅和高温的具有千年历史的两阶段冶炼过程,另一个是基于汞正弦点火的新贵企业。(没有火),从16世纪到19世纪的最后十年,全球白银的总产量几乎均分。这些过程依赖于对人类最有毒的两种重金属的广泛使用,并且它们对环境的人为排放已经造成了持续了几个世纪的影响。但是,在日本成功使用海福木(熔炼法)工艺从含银量为0.2%的硫化银矿石中生产银,这表明西班牙精炼厂在新世界中大量使用汞并不是地球化学的结果或矿石中的银含量。

更新日期:2019-01-23
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