electrowinning

thumb|Electrorefining technology converting spent commercial nuclear fuel into metal.

Electrowinning, also called electroextraction, is the electrodeposition of metals from their ores that have been put in solution via a process commonly referred to as leaching. Electrorefining uses a similar process to remove impurities from a metal. However, in electrorefining, the overall electron balance is zero, whereas electrowinning shows a net positive electron consumption in the overall reaction. Both processes use electroplating on a large scale and are important techniques for the economical and straightforward purification of non-ferrous metals. The resulting metals are said to be electrowon.