Smelting is a form of extractive metallurgy; its main use is to produce a metal from its ore. This includes production of silver, iron, copper and other base metals from their ores. Smelting uses heat and a chemical reducing agent to decompose the ore, driving off other elements as gasses or slag and leaving just the metal behind. The reducing agent is commonly a source of carbon such as coke, or in earlier times charcoal. The carbon (or carbon monoxide derived from it) removes oxygen from the ore, leaving behind elemental metal. The carbon is thus oxidized in two stages, producing first carbon monoxide and then carbon dioxide. As most ores are impure, it is often necessary to use flux, such as limestone, to remove the accompanying rock gangue as slag.

Plants for the electrolytic reduction of aluminium are also generally referred to as smelters. These do not melt aluminum oxide but instead dissolve it in aluminum fluoride. They normally use carbon electrodes, but novel smelter designs use electrodes that are not consumed in the process. The end product is molten aluminum.

Walter Sorrells is an award-winning author of mystery and suspense novels for adults and teens. He has written many novels, including Fake I.D., named one the ten Best Mysteries by Booklist magazine in 2005 and several novels based-on the television series Flight 29 Down. He also writes under the pseudonyms Lynn Abercrombie and Ruth Birmingham. He graduated from Harvard College in 1985, where he majored in History.

His novel Fulton County Blues, as Ruth Birmingham, won the 2000 Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Paperback Original.