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By D. Valic

In 1997, 9.2 million tonnes of mined, recoverable copper was produced, of which, 1.8 million tonnes or 19.4% was produced by leaching, solvent extraction and electrowinning. The amount of copper produced by this method grew faster than those attained from concentrate smelting, signifying the growing importance of this low-cost production method. Statistical experimental design, unlike traditional approaches, allows for proper distribution of experiments within the boundaries of factors being studied such that the number of experiments required to develop a sound relationship between the factors and a response is minimized. In the past, very little use has been made of statistical experimental design in copper electrowinning studies. Traditional one- variable-at-a-time approaches are widely employed for this purpose. The present study employs a factorial experimental design to relate current efficiency with current density (180 and 300 A/m2), copper concentration (25 and 65 gL), and temperature (40 and 60 °C). Pure synthetic electrolyte with a constant acid concentration of 180 g/L was used throughout the study. The designed study produced a linear relationship where the independent variables of current density, copper concentration, and temperature, and their interactions, were found statistically significant. It was shown that current efficiency could not solely be used as a predictor of copper cathode quality. The quality of the deposit is difficult to be incorporated into a model or relation. It was determined that other measures, such as cathode morphology and crystal structure should be considered. This was done through XRD and SEM analysis.

Jan 1, 1999

By Akira Yazawa

To realize highly efficient process in extractive metallurgy, continuous operation nearly in equilibrium is preferable, but most metallurgical processes consist of plural steps with different chemical potentials. Traditional two-step process of sintering followed by reduction is continuous in each step, but is heterogeneous reaction system far from equilibrium, and the chemical potentials are varied considerably along the distance the charge travels in a reactor. This route will become old-fasioned in next century due to the various inherent problems caused especially by sintering process. To establish reasonable new smelting processes, the important tasks of the metallurgists are how to introduce feed and reacting gas in the reactor, and also how to overcome the difference in chemical potential in the reactor system. Based on the ways to solve theses tasks, recent proposals of new smelting process for copper and lead are classified and discussed with the help of sulfur-oxygen potential diagram. On such potential diagram, each equilibrium step in continuous smelting is expressed at a fixed point, and two reactors with different chemical potentials must be connected by continuous molten flow through launder or partition wall. In the latter case, the reactor is apparently single, but some technical problems must be overcome. While, in a batch smelting like converter, potential variation is successively realized along a path on chemical potential diagram with the time elapsed. To establish immediate equilibrium, continuous steady flow of reactants into well mixed reactor is indispensable. In modern smelting process, the ore is mostly supplied in the form of powder which have huge surface area and fluid character, and consequently injection process must be very attractive. Several examples are discussed for both of copper and lead smelting, and promising future technologies are suggested.

Jan 1, 1988

By Hsin H. Huang

Equilibrium calculational software programs can be effectively utilized to model the importance of activity or concentration, solubility, temperature, solution pH, solution potential, and ligand complexation on extraction and recovery processes. Illustrative examples using the calculational program ST ABCAL for the creation of diagrams such as EwpH, activity or concentration-pH, and activity or concentration-EH are presented to demonstrate the fundamental characteristics of real hydrometallurgical mercury dissolution and recovery processes. An industrial application will include leaching of mercury from K 106 mercury sulfide waste and solution purification by iron cementation.

Jan 1, 2003

By Harry Littleton, Jr. Scarber, Wanliang Sun

"The Lost Foam Casting (LFC) process is relatively immature when compared to other casting processes. To make the process more robust, computer modeling is needed to reduce lead times and casting defects. In this study, metal filling of lost foam aluminum castings was visualized using state-of-art real time X-Ray technology. Metal filling of the lost foam casting was simulated using a commercial software package. The result of the computer simulation was compared with the results of the real time X-Ray visualization. Some of the computer simulation results agreed with the real time X-Ray visualization, but some did not. Based on other studies using real time X-Ray technology, new input variables, such as foam density variations, were developed for the computer modeling. With the new variables, modeling of the lost foam casting process becomes more realistic. IntroductionMold filling of the Lost Foam Casting (LFC) process is an important step toward making a quality part. In the LFC process, molten metal is poured against a refractory coated foam pattern surrounded by dry sand. At the pouring temperature of aluminum, the foam pattern is decomposed into 30% (wt) gaseous and 70% (wt) liquid foam pyrolysis products. Existence of the gaseous foam decomposition products significantly increases the back pressure on the metal stream compared with the conventional open cavity sand mold. Entrapment of the liquid pyrolysis products during the metal filling generates many casting defects, such as internal pores, fold and blisters. Existence of these casting defects sometimes seriously degrades the quality of the components manufactured by the LFC process. Understanding and controlling the metal filling of the LFC process will certainly make this process more robust."

Jan 1, 2004

By D. I. Chalmers

The Brockman rare-metals and rare earth resource is located within volcanic and volcanogenic sediments of the later Proterozoic Halls Creek Group in the East Kimberley region of Western Australia. Exploration including surface trenching, percussion and diamond drilling has defined a major resource of rare-metals and heavy rare earth elements. The host&apos; is a steeply dipping ash-flow tuff, described informally as the Niobium Tuff, enriched in zirconium, hafnium, yttrium, niobium, tantalum, rare earth elements, gallium and beryllium. The mineralization is fine- grained (<20 micrometres) and is the result of alteration and re- mobilization of comparatively simple precursor minerals such as columbite and zircon by fluorine-rich deuteric solutions that were retained in the tuff following eruption. The ultra fine-grained structure of the tuff precludes mineral liberation and separation by physical methods. However, values can be converted to water soluble sulphates by reacting with concentrated sulphuric acid at 250°C. The solution containing aluminium, niobium, tantalum, zirconium, hafnium, yttrium, rare earths and gallium can then be processed to pure products in a sequence of solvent extraction and ion-exchange steps. As a result of these processing techniques, the commercial products obtainable from the resource include mixed rare earth and yttrium concentrates, zirconium-hafnium concentrate, niobium-tantalum concentrate and ceramic grade alumina. Further separation could result in high purity products suitable for ceramic and electronic applications.

Jan 1, 1992

By Yoshio Waseda, Tetsuya Uda, Tom H. Okabe

"Halide salt has been tested as a reductant for producing titanium powder directly from TiCl4. From the results of thermodynamic investigation for several rare earth chloride systems, DyCl2 was found to be used for the reduction of TiCl4 instead of the conventional metallic reductant. When TiCl4 was fed into molten salts containing DyCl2 at 1073K, titanium powder of several ten micron meters in diameter was obtained. In contrast to the sponge titanium produced by the conventional Kroll process, the present new process using a halidothermic reduction in a reactive molten salt appears to be suitable for producing metal powder. From the thermodynamic point of view, the resultant DyCl3 can be reduced to DyCl2 by magnesium. By utilizing the multivalent halide redox couple, some possible ways of titanium powder production directly from TiCl4 by magnesiothermic reduction are shown to be feasible. This can also be applied to the development of a new continuous titanium reduction process.1 IntroductionTitanium and its alloys show attractive mechanical properties such as strength-to-weight, rigidity-to-weight ratios and excellent corrosion resistance. Nevertheless, the application of titanium alloys is limited compared to other structural materials (e.g. steels, aluminum alloys) because of its high cost of production. Currently, almost all of titanium is produced by metallothermic reduction of TiCl4 by magnesium (Kroll process)[1] in an airtight metallic reactor. This process is batch type and labor intensive. Therefore, many attempts to develop new process for producing titanium are investigated so far."

Jan 1, 2000

By Xue Ping

Sm2Fe17 alloy is an important precursor for the preparation of Sm2Fe17Nx magnet, which possesses a higher Curie temperature, larger anisotropy field, better resistance to oxidation and thermal stability. In this paper, the wet chemical co-precipitation was developed for synthesis of the Sm-Fe alloy oxide precursor. Based on the principles of simultaneous equilibrium and mass balance, a series of thermodynamic equilibrium equations of Sm(III)-Fe(II)-NH3-C2O4 2--H2O system at ambient temperature were deduced theoretically and the thermodynamic diagrams of lg[M2+]T (M=Sm, Fe) versus pH at different solution compositions were drawn. Then, the experiments were done to address the various effects on the wet chemical process, including solution pH value, reactant concentration, reaction temperature and aging time, etc. It is found that by precise control of the process, the Sm-Fe alloy oxide precursor was synthesized with fine crystallization and special size &size distribution.

Jan 1, 2008

By Kazuya Kitatani, Gen Sasaki, Naoto Ohta, Hideharu Fukunaga, Makoto Yoshida, Jin Pan, Kenya Nagahisa, Toshihiro Ishikawa

"A sintered SiC (Tyranno-SA) fiber-reinforced MAS glass matrix composite was fabricated by using a slurry infiltration method and hot-pressing. The microstructure and mechanical properties were investigated: To prepare the preform, the MAS glass slurry including a dispersing agent was infiltrated into a bundle of the fibers. The preform was then hot-pressed under the conditions of 1473 K, 30 MPa, 3.6 ksec. A unidirectionally-reinforced oxide matrix composite with 50% Vf. of the fiber and a density of 2.84 g/cm3 was obtained. As the mechanical properties at room temperature, the three-point flexural strength- and quasi-static adsorbed energy were 500 MPa arid 6,000 J/m2, respectively. Without graphite or an h-BN pre-coating on the surface of the fiber, pull-out and bridging of the fibers from the matrix was found, and this leads to a high value of the adsorbed energy. By TEM observation, nano-scale crystalline products were found between the fibers and the glass matrix. The push-out test reveals that this layer causes the appropriate debonding of the interface during the fracture process of the composite.Introduction It is known that the CFCCs (continuous-fiber-reinforced ceramic matrix composites) are characterized by their non-linear fracture behavior, which is' hardly found in monolithic ceramic materials. It is inevitable for the CFCCs to exhibit a large fracture toughness so 'that debonding of the fiber/matrix interface; pull-out and bridging of the fibers then' occurs during the fracture process. This series of fracture behavior is known as the so-called ""the mechanism of toughening of the CFCCs"". Thus, different from the MMCs in which strong interfacial bonding is necessary, the interfacial strength of the CFCCs has to be controlled. As techniques for controlling the interfacial strength, it is also known that both a CVD-graphite coating and an h-BN coating are effective to induce the mechanism of toughening[1,2]. In the case, of the Si-C-O or Si-Ti-C-O fibers/glass or crystalline oxide matrix composites, it is reported that the formation of the in-situ graphite layer, which is also effective to increase the fracture toughness of the CFCCs, is often found during the fabrication process such as hot-pressing. The lower the crystallinity of the Si-C-O fibers, the higher is the tendency to form the in-situ graphite layer as found by the chemical reaction between the fibers and the glass matrices[3-12]. On the-other hand crystallized stoichiometric 'SiC fibers are attractive for high temperature service because of the higher phase stability compared to the Si¬C-O or Si-Ti-C-O fibers. However, in the previous, studies, the mechanical properties and the interfacial chemical reaction of the crystallized SiC fibers / glass matrix Composites have still been unknown. In this study, a polycrystalline 'sintered SiC fiber-reinforced MAS glass composite was fabricated. The mechanical properties and microstructure were then investigated. The slurry infiltration technique followed by hot-pressing was used to prepare the composites. The formation of the in-situ graphite layer and the relationship between microstructure and mechanical properties at room temperature were examined by the TEM observation of the fiber/matrix interface."

Jan 1, 2000

By Pekka Taskine

In the Kokkola zinc smelter, as in most other zinc roasting plants, there is now a trend towards using concentrates with an increasing impurity content. This also often means that the size distribution of the concentrates gets finer. Iron is present in sulfidic zinc concentrates with the highest percentage as a single impurity. The behavior of iron in zinc roasting was studied in laboratory experiments. Commercial zinc concentrates with a low and high (1.5 - 16 wt-%) iron content as pyrite or in the sphalerite lattice were oxidized to various degrees to establish the reaction mechanisms of iron in roasting. Microscopy studies were carried out on the calcine, and the findings were presented in numerous photographs of the polished cross sections. SEM/EDS techniques were used for analyzing the phases and particle morphologies present in the samples. An oxidation mechanism of zinc concentrates with a high iron content was suggested.

Jan 1, 2002

By Takamitsu Nakasuga, Haiping Sun, Kyushu University, Katsumi Mori

"The kinetic behavior of reduction of chromite ore by liquid iron containing carbon and silicon has been investigated under various experimental conditions to clarify the reduction mechanism. It was found that the reduction rate of chromium ore by liquid Fe-C alloy was very slow. In addition, when carbon and silicon coexisted in the iron melt, silicon was found to preferentially oxidized to form silica, which favored for the fonnation of liquid slag and the rate of reduction was considerably accelerated. The similar effect was obtained by the addition of some fluxes, such as SiO2, Na2B407, CaO-SiO2, which also promoted the formation of a liquid slag and thus the reduction rate in the early stage also increased.IntroductionThe reduction of Cr2O3 is a basic reaction for production of ferro-chromium from chromite ore and for chromium recovery from the slag fonned during the decarburization period of a stainless steel-making process. The reduction of chromite ore consumes much energy and its reaction rate is not so high. Thus, in order to increase the reduction efficiency, it is strongly desired to clarify its reduction mechanism from the practical and the theoretical points of view."

Jan 1, 2000

By E. Açma

In this study, the production of Cu, Co, and magnetic iron oxide from the ancient copper, slags, located in Küre-Turkey, is investigated. In the process under development, fayalitic slags containing 1% Cu, 0.43% Co are reduced in a D.C. arc furnace with coke or graphite additions. A metallic alloy, consisting of 3.8% Cu, 3.3% Co, 2.1% S, and the rest being Ice, is produced by granulation of the liquid metal. About 85% recoveries of Cu and C:o are achieved by hot sulfuric acid leaching of these granules followed by H2S precipitation. The, production of magnetic iron oxide is possible from the discarded leach solution, loaded v:ith FeS04, by using a method with geothite precipitation, dehydration, controlled reduction, and re-oxidation steps. The magnetic oxides produced have 20 m2Jg surface area, 1:8.3 aspect ratio, and the coercivity of 330-380 Oersted.

Jan 1, 1993

By Frank Mucciardi, Hujun Zhao, Pietro Navarra

"A heat pipe is a device having a very high effective thermal conductivity in which two-phase flow and heat transfer takes place. Recent research at McGill University has led to a new type of heat pipe that contains a flow modifier. This improvement has enabled the device to operate at the high heat fluxes encountered in the metallurgical industry.This paper summarizes the progress made to describe the fluid flow in the evaporator section of a McGill heat pipe with the goal of understanding how the flow modifier configuration is linked to the film boiling and dry-out limitations. A separated flow model, an instability analysis, a lift-off model and an energy balance model are used to calculate the theoretical CHF with varying flow modifier configurations and operation conditions. A summary of the current work to relate the flow modifier to the dry-out limitation is also given.Determining how the flow modifier affects both the film boiling and dry-out limitation will give insight into improving the flow modifier design so as to extend the operational range of McGill heat pipes in terms of maximum heat flux and heat load capabilities.IntroductionThe McGill heat pipe is a specialized two-phase heat exchanger developed for several metallurgical applications where temperatures and heat fluxes are typically close to or beyond the maximum safe range of conventional cooling technology.Over the last few years, several breakthroughs have brought this device beyond the proof-of concept stage and a series of industrial trials have been performed with success. These trials include two oxygen injection applications for the ferrous and non-ferrous industry [l], and two light metals permanent-mould casting applications [2,3]. Current projects include a blast furnace copper taphole cooling application [4], a copper smelting application and a thermal analysis probe application."

Jan 1, 2004

By Liu Zhonghua

Hydrogen reduction of cobalt sulfide (Co9S8) was experimentally investigated in the temperature range 813-1053 K. The results revealed that the reaction kinetics can be described by the shrinking core mod¬el in chemical control regime at low temperatures, it is of first order with respect to hydrogen concentration, and the reaction activation energy is 67.4 kJ/mol. The SEM second electron images of the samples before and after experiments showed that the swelling of the sample above 973 K is due to the formation of metallic cobalt whiskers.

Jan 1, 1992

By Michal Rzyman, Nakamura Takashi, Shibata Etsuro, Grabda Mariusz, Oleszek-Kudlak Sylwia

"Thermodynamic considerations indicate that heavy metal oxides should easily react with HBr, the main gaseous product from the thermal decomposition of tetrabromobisphenol A (TBBPA), forming low boiling point metallic bromides suitable for volatile separation. Mechanisms and kinetics of the bromination reactions must be well recognized prior to developing of a new treatment for the simultaneous recycling of plastic waste containing brominated flame retardants (BFRs) and metal oxides (printed circuit boards, automotive shredder residue, plating sludge, metallurgical dusts). In this work, a differential scanning calorimeter and laboratory-scale furnace were used to investigate the possibility and conditions of the bromination of ZnO by product of thermal decomposition of TBBPA. The formed solid, condensed and gaseous products were analyzed by X-ray diffraction analysis, electron probe microanalysis, inductively coupled plasma analysis, ion chromatography and gas chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry. Introduction Tetrabromobisphenol A (TBBPA) is the largest volume brominated flame retardant (BFR) in production today and is used in more than 70% of the world’s electronic and electric (E&E) appliances [1]. The growth in the production of E&E products and the fact they become obsolete so quickly cause significant problems in the safe disposal and recycling of the electrical and electric waste (E-waste) and other BFR-containing waste [2]. Among various treatment processes, thermal methods are most useful since they allow the recycling and recovery of both the organic and inorganic fractions of the waste. However, incineration of the BFR-containing wastes results in the emission of hazardous organobromine compounds, while the main portion of bromine released from decomposed BFRs is present in flue gas as hydrogen bromide (HBr) [3]. HBr, which is known to damage incineration systems, seems to be a very effective bromination agent for many metallic oxides present in waste. The concept of this study is to take advantage this of its property."

Jan 1, 2008

By Kosei Morita, Osamu Nakano, Katsuhiko Nagai, Kazuhiro Mori

"The Sumitomo Toyo Smelter and Refinery commenced its operation in 1971 with three Peirce- Smith (PS) converters. “2 hot – 1 blowing” operation was practiced, that is one of two available converters was blowing and the other was standby in a hot state while the third converter was under repair. After several improvements, the stack time ratio reached around 90%; and processing 5 batches a day became possible.As a result of the expansion program of the Toyo smelter and refinery that started in 2001, the converter operation pattern was shifted from “2 hot – 1 blowing” to “2 hot – 2 blowing” with the installation of second converter blowers and an additional ladle crane.In 2005 a, the fourth converter was installed and “3 hot – 2 blowing” operation began. Also, with improvements experienced in the anode furnaces and the anode-casting wheel operation, today, the number of cycles has been increased up to more than 8.5 a day.The treatment techniques of fugitive gas containing sulfur dioxide from converter furnaces have been gradually reinforced, and the fixation rate of treated sulfur is currently being maintained at more than 99.9%. This paper introduces the operations described above, and the improvements in environmental management techniques for the Toyo PS converter operation."

Jan 1, 2009

By Massoud Hassanabadi

Filtration using Ceramic Foam Filters (CFFs) is a method widely used to separate inclusions from molten aluminium. In the present work, the specific permeability and form drag coefficients of nominal 50 mm thick commercial Al2O3- based CFFs, of grades 30, 50, 65 and 80, have been calculated from pressure drop experiments using high (60–500 mm s−1) and low (0.2–10 mm s−1) water velocities. Moreover, 2D axial symmetric Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) models have been developed, using COMSOL Multiphysics® to validate the experimental results. The empirically obtained values were defined as global parameters used to model the pressure, as well as the velocity fields in the water pipes and in the CFFs. The modelled pressure drop over the filter thickness for the high water velocity experiments showed < ± 1% deviation from the corresponding experimental results for all CFF grades. Moreover, the developed model also showed good agreement with the experimental results obtained from the low water velocity experiments, where the deviation of the pressure drop for the CFF samples of grade 30, 50 and 65 were ≤ ± 4.6% and for CFF samples of grade 80 ≤ ± 13.4%.

By Yong Xian, Zhaohui Sun, Honggang Zhong, Qijie Zhai, Jie Sun

Vacuum refining is admitted as an effective means to remove impurities in the process of alloy smelting. In this paper, Orthogonal and single factor experiments were carried out to investigate effects of multiple factors, such as superheat degree of the melt, degassing time and vacuum degree, on the vacuum refining process. The results showed that the best removal rate of oxygen and nitrogen is up to 82.71% and 61.3%, respectively, due to high vacuum degassing efficiency. It is found that the superheat degree is minimal impact on the deoxidization rate, in addition, nitrogen removal is controlled by the degassing time. The inclusions exist in the AlV55 alloy are mainly composed of oxides and vanadium-nitrogen compounds.

Jan 1, 2015

By Jinrong Zhang

Fresh cyanide solution was treated by near UV light with the assistance of photocatalysts. Cyanide was oxidized mainly to cyanate. Photochemical behavior of the anatase and rutile forms of TiO2 was compared. It is found that anatase has a much higher activity than that of rutile. Bubbling of oxygen in the reactor showed no appreciable increase in cyanide oxidation, implying that the reaction is surface controlling. A very interesting finding in this study is that a natural mineral, ilmenite, can replace chemical titanium dioxide as the photocatalyst. Ilmenite without any treatment did not catalyze the oxidation of cyanide. But, after being roasted at high temperature with oxygen, the oxidation was enhanced dramatically. The mechanisms of photooxidation of cyanide and the roasting of ilmenite are proposed.

Jan 1, 1991

By T. Tamagawa

Vaporization of zinc and mixing of zinc vapor with CO-CO2 mixtures were studied experimentally to prepare Zn(g)-CO-CO2-Ar mixtures with desired composition for investigating the condensation behavior and efficiency of zinc vapor. The vaporization rate of zinc was generally constant under given conditions, and could be increased by raising the flow rate of the carrier gas, temperature and vaporization area. The Zn(g)-CO-CO,,-Ar mixtures were quenched by a water-cooling sampling tube for measuring the actual composition of the mixtures in the reactor. The oxidation extent of the zinc vapor in the CO-CO2 mixtures had relation to the CO2/CO ratios and the temperatures. Under current conditions, it was necessary to employ the CO2/CO ratio below 0.125 for mixing the zinc vapor with CO-CO2 mixtures without oxidation. In addition, the appearances and zinc contents of the condensed zinc on the sampling tube were also examined.

Jan 1, 2001

By Byung-Su Kim

The reaction between calcium sulfate and hydrogen is of interest both as a means of regenerating calcium sulfide as a reductant of sulhr dioxide to elemental sulhr and for producing elemental sulhr from gypsum. This reaction was investigated using a thermogravimetric analysis technique in the absence and presence of nickel catalyst. The reaction temperature was varied between 973 and 1153 K, while the hydrogen partial pressures of 12.9 - 86.1 kPa were utilized. At 1073 K and a hydrogen partial pressure of 86.1 kPa, 60 % of the original calcium sulfate in the absence, and 95 % in the presence, of the nickel catalyst was converted to calcium sulfide in one hour.

Jan 1, 1999