smelting

verb

1. (form-of, gerund, participle, present)present participle and gerund of smelt

noun

1. The process of melting or fusion, especially to extract a metal from its ore.

   “Buried within the Mediterranean littoral are some seventy to ninety million tons of slag from ancient smelting, about a third of it concentrated in Iberia. This ceaseless industrial fueling caused the deforestation of an estimated fifty to seventy million acres of woodlands.”