Flash smelting

Okay kiddo, let me explain what flash smelting is - it's like cooking but instead of food, we cook metals like copper and nickel in a special oven called a flash furnace.

In the flash furnace, we put the metal ores and some other chemicals, like sulfur, and then we blow hot air into the furnace really fast. This makes the furnace very hot, like when you leave your toy car outside in the sun on a hot day.

The heat makes the metal ores melt and a liquid metal called matte forms at the bottom of the furnace. We can take out the matte and then separate the metal from the rest of the stuff we put in the furnace.

This process is called flash smelting because it happens really quickly, in just a few minutes. It's like when we cook popcorn in the microwave, it pops really fast and we have tasty popcorn to eat.

Flash smelting is used by big companies to make a lot of metal at once, like for building cars or phones or even using it for electricity. And that, my little friend, is what flash smelting is all about.