China Nonferrous Metallurgy

Electrolyte evaporation concentration-cooling crystallization is widely used in copper smelting industry to produce copper sulfate by-products, which is an important purification means to adjust the balance between copper and acid in copper electrolysis process. Common problems such as low evaporation efficiency, long evaporation time and high single steam consumption exist in conventional atmospheric evaporation of copper sulfate. Based on the analysis of the material properties of copper sulfate and the relationship between boiling point and vacuum degree, Southwest Copper Branch has developed a three-effect mixed-flow vacuum evaporation concentration technology for copper sulfate and successfully industrialized. This technology realizes the automatic control of copper sulfate evaporation process, greatly improves the evaporation efficiency of copper sulfate, reduces the steam consumption by 45%, and recovers the secondary steam condensate 120m3/d, creating an annual economic benefit of more than 3 million Yuan. The evaporation system runs well, the quality of copper sulfate products is stable. It has advantages such as high efficiency, energy saving, environmental protection and fully automated production of copper sulfate, which solves the common problems in the industry and has the value of popularization and application.