Summary
Outokumpu Oy has intensively studied the production of high-grade copper matte in a flash smelting furnace since the 1950s. Blister copper was first produced in the pilot furnace of the Metallurgical Research Centre at Pori in 1969 and the first commercial plant for direct blister production was commenced in 1978 in Poland. This paper is a survey on the effect of oxygen potential or matte grade on the metallurgy of smelting copper concentrates in a flash smelting furnace. Increasing the matte grade in the smelting step improves the smelter operation in many ways. For instance, it increases the use of the combustion energy of concentrates, converts a higher portion of sulfur to a continuous and concentrated gas stream, decreases matte handling, and gives less fugitive gas. However, copper recirculation via slag cleaning increases. In general, the volatilization of harmful impurities slightly decreases when increasing the matte grade in flash smelting. Simultaneously, the partition coefficients of minor elements between matte and slag normally decline, so that higher portions of impurities are slagged when there are higher oxygen potentials. Only the responses of arsenic, antimony, and bismuth are somewhat different at higher matte grade.
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Mäkinen, J.K., Jåfs, G.A. Production of Matte, White Metal, and Blister Copper by Flash Furnace. JOM 34, 54–59 (1982). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03338029
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03338029