Behavior of copper and lead during mineralurgical and hydrometallurgical processing of flash smelting slag

Abstract

There are only a few smelters processing copper concentrates directly into blister copper. Despite the many advantages of this process, a serious challenge of this technology is the need to process the resulting flash smelting slag. It contains 12–15% copper and 2.5–4% lead. In this form, it cannot be considered as waste material and, therefore, a high-temperature reduction process is carried out. This decopperization process is energy- and time-consuming. The use of mineralurgical and hydrometallurgical processes, selective enrichment of the appropriate slag fractions in copper and lead, followed by its hydrometallurgical processing and recovery of Cu and Pb could be an interesting supplement to the methods used so far. The article presents results of research on the possibility of separation of useful components from copper slag using the original method of sieve analysis, gravitational enrichment and magnetic separation. Preliminary results of tests were made on a laboratory scale. Then, selective leaching of copper and lead from flash smelting slag was carried out, obtaining very promising results.