TITLE:
The Influence of the Carbon Surface on the Rate of Copper Recovery from Slag of the Direct-to-Blister Process
AUTHORS:
Piotr Madej, Marian Kucharski
KEYWORDS:
Outokumpu Direct-to-Blister Process, Slag, Kinetics
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Access Library Journal,
Vol.1 No.8,
November
21,
2014
ABSTRACT: The study was devoted to the investigation of the influence of the carbon reducer’s surface on the rate of the copper removal (in the form of a copper-reach alloy, Cu-Pb-Fe) from the slag produced in the flash direct-to-blister process at the Glogów smelter in Poland. The slag used in this work was taken from the direct-to-blister Outokumpu flash furnace at the smelter in Glogów. Graphite penetrators of different surfaces were used as the slag reducer, and the experiments were carried out at 1573 K. It was found that the rate of the de-coppering process of the “Glogów” slag increased with the increase of the reducer’s surface. The rate of the copper reduction from the slag in the form of Cu-Pb-Fe alloys was identified with the oxygen removal from this slag and described by the equation: , where: n[o] —the number of the oxygen moles which could be removed from the slag; S —the surface on which the reduction took place (it was assumed that it is equal to the penetrator area); k —the rate constant; n —the exponent. It was found that the reaction rate “constant” as well as the exponent increased with the increase of the superficial gas velocity, which was caused by the decrease in the gaps between the crucibles and the graphite penetrators. Therefore, it can be concluded that the reduction process was very likely controlled by the convective mass transfer.