It is obtained commercially by roasting arsenical pyrites in either a Brunton's or Oxland's rotatory calciner, the crude product being collected in suitable condensing chambers, and afterwards refined by resublimation, usually in reverberatory furnaces, the foreign matter being deposited in a long flue leading to the condensing chambers.
In some processes of lead-smelting, where the minerals treated contain sand, the long calciner is provided with a melting bottom close to the fire-place, so that the desulphurized ore leaves the furnace as a glassy slag or silicate, which is subsequently reduced to the metallic state by fusion with fluxes in blast furnaces.
Brunton's calciner, used in the "burning" of the pyritic minerals associated with tin ore, is a familiar example of this type.
