Sustainable Mining and Metallurgy

The existing process of smelting secondary nickel concentrate in reverberatory furnace to produce nickel anode plate has some problems, such as low heat utilization rate of fuel, large fuel consumption, short service life of furnace refractory, fragile anode plate, high residual electrode rate, high operation cost, bad operation environment, etc. The process research of producing metallized nickel anode plate by smelting secondary nickel concentrate in oxygen enriched side-blown smelting technology has been completed. The composition of metallized nickel matte is Ni+Cu≥76%, Fe＜3%, and S 16%-20%. The optimum process parameters was as followed: the reaction temperature was 1450-1600℃, the oxygen concerntration was 65%-75%, the continuous feed rate was 100kg/h, the ratio of oxygen to feed was 10-45Nm³/t, and the reductant rate was 0.5%-1%. The oxygen enriched side-blown bath smelting technology can produce metallized nickel anode plate, realizes the purpose of “melting, iron removal and sulfur reduction” of secondary nickel concentrate, produces high metallized nickel anode plate, improves the yield of nickel anode plate, greatly improves the heat utilization rate, improves the production efficiency and energy production, and reduces the production cost.