China Nonferrous Metallurgy

When high arsenic copper concentrate is subjected to pyrometallurgy, arsenic and its compounds mostly volatilize into gas phase (offgas), which leads to a series of problems such as high operation cost of equipment and serious environmental pollution. This paper took the ISA furnace-PS converter-anode furnace intensive copper smelting process as an example, studied the state and migration characteristics of impurity arsenic in ISA furnace smelting, cleaning furnace reduction, converter converting and reverberatory furnace refining, of which 58.8% of arsenic entered ISA furnace dust and 0.4% remained in anode copper. In this test, oxidation volatilization method and alkali addition slagging method were applied, and the control measures of three procedures, namely smelting, converting and refining, were put forward. According to the arsenic characteristics of easy volatility and difficult solidification, the control methods such as injecting alkaline impurity remover and installing ISA furnace guide pipe can improve the arsenic solidification effect and arsenic removal amount in pyrometallurgical stage, and solve the problems of large amount of arsenic-containing dust in smelting and high arsenic content in copper products.