Mixing Phenomena in a Bottom Blown Copper Smelter: A Water Model Study
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COPPER sulfide ores are the major source of the world’s primary copper. The copper must be chemically separated from sulfur, iron and a wide range of impurity elements in order to produce commercial copper metal. The pyrometallurgical process is the major separation technique which involves a series of high temperature oxidation reactions of the copper sulfide ores by air or oxygen-enriched air. The oxidation reactions include two steps: smelting process to produce matte and converting process to produce copper. Bath smelting is one of the major technologies in copper production because of its high smelting efficiency, low capital cost, low energy consumption, and reduced dust production. From the perspective of gas blown regime, developed bath smelting practice can be categorized into three general types: (1) top-submerged blown, including Ausmelt and Isasmelt; (2) top-suspended blown, such as Mitsubishi smelting; and (3) submerged-side blown, such as Noranda and Teniente smelting. Recently, Dongying Fangyuan Nonferrous Metals Co. Ltd. (Fangyuan) developed a new bottom blown LANG SHUI, PhD Student, XIAODONG MA, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, ANH NGUYEN, Professor, and BAOJUN ZHAO, Fangyuan Fellow, are with The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. Contact e-mail: [email protected] ZHIXIANG CUI, President, is with the Dongying Fangyuan Nonferrous Metals Co., Ltd, Dongying, P.R. China. M. AKBAR RHAMDHANI, Associate Professor, is with Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia. Manuscript submitted September 7, 2014. METALLURGICAL AND MATERIALS TRANSACTIONS B
copper smelting technology.[1–8] The main equipment of the technology is a horizontal cylindrical reactor which is equipped with 9 oxygen lances at the bottom of the furnace to blow oxygen-enriched air into the molten bath. The size of the furnace is F 4.4916.5 m and it is lined with 380 mm thick chrome-magnesia bricks. The 9 oxygen lances are arranged in two rows on the bottom. The lower row with 5 lances is located 7 deg from the vertical position and the upper row with 4 lances is located 22 deg from the vertical position. The angle between the two rows is 15 deg as shown in Figure 1. Reports from industrial operations showed that the volume specific capacity of this reactor is higher than other current copper smelters.[9] Besides, it is autogenous smelting, meaning heat generated by chemical reactions is sufficient to keep bath temperature constant.[2] In molten bath, the first step of the reactions is the melting of concentrate particles and decomposing of high valence sulfides, such as FeS2 and CuFeS2. And then these sulfides are oxidized to form FeS-Cu2S matte and iron oxides. Iron oxides generated by those reactions continuously react with SiO2 in flux to form slag which is insoluble to matte and floats on top of the matte layer. All these reactions occur in molten bath, the mass transfer of the sulfides, matte, and slag significantly affects the reaction efficiency of the smelter. The bottom blown concept was firstly applied in steelmaking; consequent
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