The Role Of Chemical Reaction Equipment in Extracting Electrolytic Copper

Xi'an Maike Metal International Group Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Maike Group"), founded in 1993, is an important metal and mineral trader in China, and is now recognized as a leader in the Chinese industry. It has more than 20 business institutions and offices in Chinese Mainland, Hong Kong, Singapore, London and other places, forming an international marketing network covering more than 20 countries and regions on six continents in the world.

 

 

In February 2015, Meike Group and ACHIEVE CHEM jointly conducted a special research project on "How Electrolytic Copper is Refined" to explore the development of non-ferrous copper.

 

 

   

 

The copper ore hidden in the deep mountains has numerous types, either shining with gold or colorful, with a huge appearance but very limited accuracy and purity. After deep excavation, the copper ore was crushed,

 

Large chunks of copper ore were split into thousands of crushed stones. In order to better refine, small pieces of copper ore are sent to a ball mill, ground into powder, and subjected to flotation and drying to obtain a raw copper concentrate with a copper content (mass fraction) of no less than 13% for copper smelting. On the way to becoming electrolytic copper, we have officially entered the smelting process here. The smelting methods for producing electrolytic copper from copper concentrate are divided into two categories: pyrometallurgy and hydrometallurgy.

 

 

Pyro smelting is mainly based on Copper monosulfide concentrate, and electrolytic copper is formed through smelting, converting, pyro refining, electrolytic refining and other links.

 

Sulfur smelting (from copper concentrate to matte) mainly uses copper concentrate to make matte smelting, with the aim of oxidizing some iron in the copper concentrate, removing slag, and producing sulfuric acid from sulfur to produce matte.

 

Matte blowing (from matte to crude copper) further oxidizes and slags the matte to remove iron and sulfur, producing crude copper.

 

Pyro refining (from cake copper to anode copper) further removes impurity elements from crude copper through oxidation slagging to produce anode copper.

 

Electrolytic refining (from anode copper to electrolytic copper) involves the introduction of direct current, which dissolves the anode copper and precipitates pure copper at the cathode. Impurities enter the anode mud or electrolyte, achieving the separation of copper and impurities and producing electrolytic copper.

 

 

Chemical equipment commonly used for pyrometallurgy of Copper monosulfide includes:

 

Furnace: used to provide high temperature environment and heat copper sulfide ore to melting point.

Cooling device: used to cool and solidify the products after smelting.

Filter equipment: used to separate solid and liquid phases and filter out Copper monosulfide products.

Oxygen supply system: used to provide oxygen for oxidation reactions.

Heating equipment: Electric furnace, gas furnace, etc., used to heat the reaction system.

 

The following are the detailed operating steps:

 

Ore preparation: crush copper sulfide ore into proper particle size.

Add to the furnace: Place the ore in a pre heated furnace. You can add some solvents or fluxes as needed, such as coke or alkali metal compounds.

Heating: Start the heating circulator to provide sufficient heat to bring the ore to its melting point. Throughout the entire process, control the heating temperature and time to ensure sufficient reaction.

Oxidation reaction: Inject proper amount of oxygen into the furnace to oxidize copper sulfide ore. Oxygen will react with sulfides to form gases such as SO2 and sulfate.

Collect SO2 gas: Collect SO2 gas through cooling devices and filtration systems, and process and recover it.

Product separation: Use the stainless steel distillation system to take out the cooled and solidified products from the furnace, and then conduct solid-liquid separation through the filtering equipment to obtain Copper monosulfide products.

Product treatment: further treatment of Copper monosulfide products, such as cleaning, drying and refining, to improve the purity of products.

Gas treatment: Conduct tail gas treatment on the collected SO2 gas, such as purification, absorption, or conversion, to reduce its impact on the environment.

 

Wet smelting involves pre oxidation or sulfuric acid roasting of copper minerals to transform them into soluble states, followed by leaching, extraction, purification, and electrowinning to extract electrolytic copper.

 

The process of pyrometallurgical copper smelting is different from that of hydrometallurgical copper smelting, but due to the constraints of raw materials under the current technological level, pyrometallurgical copper smelting is still the mainstream at this stage.

 

A copper ore has undergone an upgrade transformation from 1.0 to 2.0, from completeness to fragmentation, from fragmentation to recombination, from recombination to deconstruction, and from deconstruction to iteration, transforming into electrolytic copper sheet.