For some time, China has been the largest producer of antimony and its compounds, with most production coming from the Xikuangshan Mine in Hunan.
The industrial methods for refining antimony are roasting and reduction with carbon or direct reduction of stibnite with iron.
It has the same crystal structure as red phosphorus and black arsenic, it oxidizes in air and may ignite spontaneously.
At 100 °C, it gradually transforms into the stable form.
Later Greeks also used στἰβι stibi, as did Celsus and Pliny, writing in Latin, in the first century AD.
It was purported to be written by a Benedictine monk, writing under the name Basilius Valentinus in the 15th century; if it were authentic, which it is not, it would predate Biringuccio.
The metal antimony was known to German chemist Andreas Libavius in 1615 who obtained it by adding iron to a molten mixture of antimony sulfide, salt and potassium tartrate.
This relatively close packing leads to a high density of 6.697 g/cm Even though this element is not abundant, it is found in more than 100 mineral species. on Antimony Peak), but more frequently it is found in the sulfide stibnite (Sb An artifact, said to be part of a vase, made of antimony dating to about 3000 BC was found at Telloh, Chaldea (part of present-day Iraq), and a copper object plated with antimony dating between 2500 BC and 2200 BC has been found in Egypt.
commented that "we only know of antimony at the present day as a highly brittle and crystalline metal, which could hardly be fashioned into a useful vase, and therefore this remarkable 'find' (artifact mentioned above) must represent the lost art of rendering antimony malleable." Moorey was unconvinced the artifact was indeed a vase, mentioning that Selimkhanov, after his analysis of the Tello object (published in 1975), "attempted to relate the metal to Transcaucasian natural antimony" (i.e.