| Variants of zone refining | Characteristics | Advantages | Disadvantages | Application |
| Horizontal zone refining | Crucible is positioned horizontally; Heating elements move horizontally | Easy to load and unload materials; easily distinguish the interface | Bulk transport phenomenon; equipment occupies more spaces | Most metals, except for some reactive materials |
| Vertical zone refining | Crucible is positioned vertically and heating elements move vertically | Less place occupation | Not easy to load and unload materials; more risk on cracking crucible | Most metals, except for some reactive materials |
| Floating zone refining | Without crucible; The material is positioned vertically; The molten zone is held by liquid surface tension | Less contamination resources; less place occupation; good heat transfer | Limited charging material with high surface tension; Less production due to small size of material | Reactive metals, such as silicon, tungsten, zirconium, iron, etc. |
| Continuous zone refining | Having feeding inlet and product and waste outlet; Feed Materials and get product and waste continuously | High production; High refining efficiency | Complicated design; High cost; Difficulty in operation | Theoretically most metals, but the development is in the experimental stage; no practical results or commercial use at present |