Pierre Manhès (1841 – 1906) was a French
metallurgist
Metallurgy is a domain of materials science and engineering that studies the physical and chemical behavior of metallic elements, their inter-metallic compounds, and their mixtures, which are known as alloys.
Metallurgy encompasses both the sc ...
and businessman, who succeeded in 1880 to adapt the
Bessemer process
The Bessemer process was the first inexpensive industrial process for the mass production of steel from molten pig iron before the development of the open hearth furnace. The key principle is removal of impurities from the iron by oxidation ...
to the
pyrometallurgy
Pyrometallurgy is a branch of extractive metallurgy. It consists of the thermal treatment of minerals and metallurgical ores and concentrates to bring about physical and chemical transformations in the materials to enable recovery of valuable ...
of the
copper
Copper is a chemical element with the symbol Cu (from la, cuprum) and atomic number 29. It is a soft, malleable, and ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. A freshly exposed surface of pure copper has a pinkis ...
. With his engineer , he developed the
Manhès-David process and converter, which were widely adopted, mainly in the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...
.
In 1883, under license to use the patented process Franklin Farrel introduced the Manhes-David furnace at the Parrot smelter in
Butte, Montana. Its successly adoption was followed by Anaconda at Butte, Copper Queen at
Bisbee, Arizona
Bisbee is a city in and the county seat of Cochise County in southeastern Arizona, United States. It is southeast of Tucson and north of the Mexican border. According to the 2020 census, the population of the town was 4,923, down from 5,575 ...
, United Verde,
Jerome, Arizona
Jerome is a town in the Black Hills of Yavapai County in the U.S. state of Arizona. Founded in the late 19th century on Cleopatra Hill overlooking the Verde Valley, Jerome is located more than above sea level. It is about north of Phoenix alo ...
, and other plants by the 1890s. Before the adoption of the process, copper mines in the Western United States produced only matte, which required further, costly purification steps in east coast refineries. The Manhes-David step increased the purity of copper metal produced at the Western mine site, up to 99%, and more with the addition of the electrolysis process by the end of the century. The growing electrical needs for refined copper and its better conductivity was met by the purer metal now (ca. 1900) coming from the mines.
Nowadays, in the beginning of the XXI, Manhès-David process is still in use, to refine 90% of the copper
mattes, and 60% of the nickel extracted in the world. But his silica-lined converter has been superseded by the improved
{{DEFAULTSORT:Manhès, Pierre
1841 births
1906 deaths
19th-century French inventors
French metallurgists