Abstract
The depleting and increasingly complex mineral resources bring challenges into the area of metal production, bringing new boundary conditions to the smelting and refining processes. Thermodynamics of phases and equilibria are the key to the analysis of pyrometallurgical processes, enabling descriptions of their limiting boundary conditions. The raw material basis of non-ferrous metals needs an effective control of iron oxide fluxing due to the challenging fact that the targeted metal values of, e.g., copper, nickel, lead, and tin will exist as minority components in the smelter feeds compared to iron sulphides, gangue, and many harmful elements. This means more complex slag compositions and the amount of produced slag being several times that of the metal production. This feature severely impacts the heat balance of the smelting vessels where autogenous operation without external fuels becomes more and more difficult to maintain.
Highlights
Sustainability 2021, 13, 12826. https://The primary raw materials of metals are important sources of many small metals, but their recovery is not feasible in current technologies
Compared with the traditional copper secondaries, A and B type ‘pure’ copper scrap [10,11], the various fractions and types of WEEE as well as battery scrap introduced in the primary copper and nickel smelting and refining circuits bring new elements not familiar to, e.g., sulphide mineral raw materials
This paper introduces the use of constrained phase equilibria of multi-component industrial systems in the process analysis where the boundary conditions are derived in a straightforward manner from the industrial reactors and their characteristic features
Summary
The primary raw materials of metals are important sources of many small metals, but their recovery is not feasible in current technologies. WEEE (waste electric and electronic equipment) and other secondary sources of non-ferrous metals having short lifetime will become increasingly important sources of raw materials in the future to satisfy the growing demand of metals [3,4] Their processing and separation from the materials streams into pure metals in the present smelting and refining technologies with high resource efficiency [5] and recovery rates of. Compared with the traditional copper secondaries, A and B type ‘pure’ copper scrap [10,11], the various fractions and types of WEEE as well as battery scrap introduced in the primary copper and nickel smelting and refining circuits bring new elements not familiar to, e.g., sulphide mineral raw materials For their recovery, a large amount of fundamental research is needed for process optimisation purposes and for enabling their full recoveries [12,13]. The case studies use well-defined topics as examples for the copper and nickel smelting and refining industries, representing typical large heterogeneous systems and future challenges in the field
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