AN EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION ON LEAD ISOTOPIC FRACTIONATION DURING METALLURGICAL PROCESSES

In this paper, experiments are designed to imitate the non-equilibrium evaporation metallurgical process of lead. The lead isotope ratios of the remaining lead liquid with different percentage losses were then determined using high-solution MC–ICP–MS. The results show that this process does alter lead isotopic ratios of the remaining liquid. However, the variations are so much smaller than the speculated values using the theoretical formula that in most ancient metallurgical processes, the lead isotopic fractionation can be neglected.