There is a very large variety of zinc-containing materials available
as feedstock and therefore, correspondingly, a large number of
possible processing technologies. From an economic perspective,
the synthetic processes for ZnO may be divided into two groups:
low cost bulk industrial methods and high cost laboratory or pilotplant
scale methods. The main technological differences between
the various production methods involve the zinc precursors and the
process temperatures, the unit operations used and, of course, the
scale at which they are carried out. In addition, an extremely wide
Fig. 2. Chart showing the various uses of zinc metal. Zinc oxide is the main chemical
produced from zinc metal. Compiled using data from diverse sources.
range of laboratory or pilot-scale techniques have been reported
but very few of these are of actual commercial interest, and we
will mention only those that appear to offer some advantages for
specialized applications.