Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. The salt extraction process is an electrolytic method which may be used to extract valuable metals from slag, low-grade ores, or other materials by using molten salts. This method was developed by S. Seetharaman, O. Grinder, L. Teng and X. Ge at the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden as part of a large Steel Eco-Cycle Project in 2005. In the first step of this process, the slag or other raw materials containing metal values of interest, e.g. chromium, is dissolved into the molten salt phase at a suitable temperature. It is important to find a suitable flux to achieve the dissolution of oxides. According to the Fajans' rules, AlCl3, as a covalent metal chloride, is able to release chloride ions, which then can effectively break the chemical bonds between metal and oxygen atoms, leading to the formation of corresponding soluble metal chlorides and capture of oxygen in Al2O3 AlCl3 was proved indeed to be a powerful fluxing agent in this regard.
