On the Development of a Zinc Vapor Condensation Process for the Solar Carbothermal Reduction of Zinc Oxide

Abstract

In the conventional Imperial Smelting Process, the dominating pyrometallurgical zinc production process, zinc vapor is recovered from the furnace off-gas by absorption into an intense spray of molten lead droplets in a splash condenser, followed by separation of zinc from the Zn-Pb alloy upon cooling from 550°C to 450°C by taking advantage of the decrease in the solubility of zinc in lead at lower temperatures. The adaptation of this condenser technology into a solar-driven thermochemical plant using concentrated solar energy faces several drawbacks owing to its mechanical complications and the continuous recirculation of large quantities of lead. An alternative zinc condenser concept involving gas bubbling through a zinc liquid bath of the off-gas evolved from the carbothermal reduction of ZnO is thus proposed and numerically modeled for transient heat and mass transfer. Condensation of bubbles containing 53.5% of noncondensable gases yielded chemical conversions of Zn(g) to Zn(l) in the range of 95.6–99.8% for operation in the temperature range 500–650°C while conversions of Zn(g) to ZnO in the order of 10−6 were obtained, thus predicting successful suppression of Zn(g) reoxidation by CO2 and CO.