Crossword clues for refining
refining
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Refine \Re*fine"\ (r?*f?n"), v. t. [imp. & p. p. Refined (-find"); p. pr. & vb. n. Refining.] [Pref. re- + fine to make fine: cf. F. raffiner.]
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To reduce to a fine, unmixed, or pure state; to free from impurities; to free from dross or alloy; to separate from extraneous matter; to purify; to defecate; as, to refine gold or silver; to refine iron; to refine wine or sugar.
I will bring the third part through the fire, and will refine them as silver is refined.
--Zech. xiii. 9. -
To purify from what is gross, coarse, vulgar, inelegant, low, and the like; to make elegant or exellent; to polish; as, to refine the manners, the language, the style, the taste, the intellect, or the moral feelings.
Love refines The thoughts, and heart enlarges.
--Milton.Syn: To purify; clarify; polish; ennoble.
Wiktionary
n. refinement (process of refining) vb. (present participle of refine English)
WordNet
n. the process of removing impurities (as from oil or metals or sugar etc.) [syn: refinement, purification]
Wikipedia
Refining (also perhaps called by the mathematical term affining) is the process of purification of a (1) substance or a (2) form. The term is usually used of a natural resource that is almost in a usable form, but which is more useful in its pure form. For instance, most types of natural petroleum will burn straight from the ground, but it will burn poorly and quickly clog an engine with residues and by-products. The term is broad, and may include more drastic transformations, such as the reduction of ore to metal (for which see Refining (metallurgy)).
The refining of liquids is often accomplished by distillation or fractionation. Gases can be refined in this way as well, by being cooled and/or compressed until they liquefy. Gases and liquids can also be refined by extraction with a selective solvent that dissolves away either the substance of interest, or the unwanted impurities.
Many solids can be refined by growing crystals in a solution of the impure material; the regular structure of the crystal tends to favor the desired material and exclude other kinds of particles.
Chemical reactions are often used to remove impurities of particular types.
The use of silicon and other semiconductors in electronics depends on precise control of impurities. The zone melting process developed by William Gardner Pfann was used to produce pure germanium, and subsequently float-zone silicon became available when Henry Theuerer of Bell Labs adapted Pfann's method to silicon.
Types of materials that are usually refined:
- metals - see Refining (metallurgy)
- petroleum
- silicon
- sugar
- table salt
- vegetable oil
- air
Refining (as in non-metallurgical uses) consists of purifying an impure material, in this case a metal. It is to be distinguished from other processes such as smelting and calcining in that those two involve a chemical change to the raw material, whereas in refining, the final material is usually identical chemically to the original one, only it is purer. The processes used are of many types, including pyrometallurgical and hydrometallurgical techniques.
Usage examples of "refining".
Ganges to the Straits of Gibraltar, that they had no leisure for theological controversy: and though the Alcoran, the original monument of their faith, seems to contain some violent precepts, they were much less infected with the spirit of bigotry and persecution than the indolent and speculative Greeks, who were continually refining on the several articles of their religious system.
Refining plants are located near mine sites, if possible, since transportation is the major item in bauxite costs.
In a flutelike voice, he sang of the sacred writings, or Vedas, composed well before the first millennium bc, and of the catalogue of magical yajnas, sacrificial formulas, mantras, and rituals that the Vedic religion embodied, and of the many schools, sects, and religions that had developed through the centuries: Sankhya, Yoga, Vedanta, Vaishnavas, Shaivas, Shak-tas, all of which were preached and practised under the separate canopies of Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism, which in turn took their impetus from the original Vedic, changing and refining the basic precepts into a multiplicity of separate doctrines : Karma, avatar, samsara, dharma, trimurti, bhakti, maya.
Virk, the largest of these, engaged in the simple refining of minerals brought in by the Uisgu or Nyssomu Oddlings and was a secondary center of the Ruwenda gem and precious metal trade.
For the work of further refining, and to identify and isolate the single, critical memory peptide, larger quantities were essential.
Satisfied that he could do it, he continued refining that skill, riping criminals, derelicts, and the mentally unstable into loyal drones, all eager to make that suicidal time jump and be entombed forever in the earth, all to build his little home.
These beautiful edifices exert a refining and uplifting influence upon the lives of men.
We will be coaxing Venetian and Thuringian glassmakers to make chemically resistant borosilicate glass, importing and refining Japanese zinc, and producing a variety of industrial chemicals.
British Horological Institute on the further possibilities of using electricity as a way of refining the accuracy and running time of clocks.
It would be refining too much, perhaps, even considering his monomania, to hint that his vindictiveness towards the White Whale might have possibly extended itself in some degree to all sperm whales, and that the more monsters he slew by so much the more he multiplied the chances that each subsequently encountered whale would prove to be the hated one he hunted.
But there was no deeply invested tradition of Orientalism, and consequently in the United States knowledge of the Orient never passed through the refining and reticulating and reconstructing processes, whose beginning was in philological study, that it went through in Europe.
Ahead of him somewhere, a thousand rasping ultra-diamond teeth, patterned on the radulae of a snail, had been chewing through the metal core of the rock, sucking the debris into the sorter and then into the storage bay for refining on the main ship.
Belt and ramming rocks into the hoppers for transfer to meltdown and refining above Venus.
His neural programs were reviewing and refining data from the Dynasty arrays, pulling everything he could find on Ozzie.
Bell of the stories told in Amman the eccentric English recluse with the appalling wreckage of a face who lived a life of asceticism and alcohol eight hundred feet below sea level, in a town that was ten thousand years old, reading and drinking and refining his soul in the heavy sun of Jericho.