Long boring winter, time to investigate some ideas.
It's seems that there are 3 major ways to purify (or refine) lead and related metals.
1) Electrolysis - the gold standard for purity
2) Selective oxidation - targeting specific metals in the mix to remove them. (I would put the zinc/sulfer method in here)
3) Vacuum Distillation - just like making whiskey, only higher temperatures
It seems that the removal of zinc, antimony and silver are easily accomplished by high temperature vacuum distillation/condensation of the metals from a raw lead base. Likewise, lead can be distilled from copper base, although at higher temps.
Has anyone ever done any research into this type of process?
If we can cast aluminum/brass/copper in a home hobby setting, I'm sure we can achieve a vacuum distillation as a hobby project; the temperatures are pretty similar. Can we recover nearly pure lead from the wide range of garbage lead alloys that are out there?
Comments and ideas welcome
~J