text: Just as iron produced by a blast furnace comes out alloyed with other chemical elements as cast iron, copper extracted from ore becomes an alloy with sulfur, iron, etc. called matte. To apply the same purification processes to these two metals is therefore logical. Applying the Bessemer process to copper metallurgy was proposed, and the principle validated in 1866, ten years after Henry Bessemer's invention, by the Russian engineer Semenikow.
  The refinement of the alloy in the converter is possible because the combustion of undesirable elements is strongly exothermic: the oxidation of silicon and carbon respectively produce 32.8 and 10.3 kilojoules per kilogram. On the other hand, if a copper matte contains an abundance of iron and sulfur, these elements must first be separated (which consumes 6.8 kilojoules per kilogram of FeS) before their oxidation (which only produces 5.9 and 9.1 kJ/kg respectively) can begin.