Sustainable Mining and Metallurgy

A smelter adopts Ausmelt oxygen enriched top blowing bath smelting technology. In order to build a green plant, the production of three converters was reduced to two, and the processing capacity of Ausmelt furnace was reduced from 210t/h to 180t/h, leading to a decline in production capacity. In order to improve the production capacity of crude copper, the plant increased the oxygen concentration from 55% to 62%~65%, and the copper matte grade from 67% to 72%~75%. This paper studied the impact of increasing the oxygen concentration and copper matte grade on copper smelting, carried out feasibility demonstration, and analyzed the problems encountered in the Ausmelt furnace process, boiler dust collection process, settling electric furnace process, and converter process through experimental research, and put foward corresponding solutions. Through the operation of high oxygen concentration and high copper matte grade, the first is to reduce the amount of smelting flue gas and improve the processing capacity of Ausmelt furnace; Second, improve smelting heat efficiency and reduce energy consumption of Ausmelt furnace system; Third, the copper matte quantity is greatly reduced, the converter converting time is shortened, and the converter processing capacity is improved; Fourth, the total flue gas volume of smelting and converting is greatly reduced to reduce the load of the acid making system.