Tin was one of the first metals known to man. Throughout ancient history, various cultures recognized the virtures of tin in coatings, alloys, and compounds and the use of the metal increased with advancing technology. Today, tin is an important metal in industry even though the annual tonnage used is much smaller than those of many other metals. One reason for the small tonnage is that, in most applications, only very small amounts of tin are used at a time. Tin is produced from both primary and secondary sources.
Secondary tin is produced from recycled materis.
The major tin producing countries are Indonesia, Malaya, Bolivia, China and Nigeria. The physical appearance of tin is a silvery white lustrous metal, withg a blueish tinge. It also has noticeable characteristics of softness and malleability. Tin is comparatively easy to reduce to metal form oxide by pyrometallurgy. In this process, the tin tends to be absorbed into slag and thus the process needs to be repeated.