High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Zinc smelting is the process of converting zinc concentrates (ores that contain zinc) into pure zinc. Zinc smelting has historically been more difficult than the smelting of many other metals, because in comparison to e.g. iron, zinc has a fairly low boiling point - at the temperatures typically used for smelting metals, zinc is a gas that will escape from a furnace with the flue gas and be lost, unless specific measures are taken to prevent that.