Takahiko Okura

Abstract:

Under an umbrella of the risk of climate change, the copper extraction process is seeking for the innovation in order to attain the saving energy and workload using IoT and so on. Many metallurgists are devoting their R&D activities to higher productivity and continuous smelting processes. More directly, it faces many troublesome issues such as scarcity of natural resources with lower Cu grade and higher impurity contents in its concentrates. The world needs more copper for the society amenities, then recycling from the wastes and recovery of copper from tailing dams in which some 10 - 15% of excavated copper sleeps should be accomplished. Lower Cu grade in concentrate urges the process and the industry to extract excess reaction heat in smelting furnaces, to treat bigger amount of smelting slag where the valued metals should be retrieved if possible, and to market excess sulphur by-products. Elimination and stable fixation of toxic impurities such as Hg and As are urgent concerns for metallurgists. In the paper, some ideas and research works done by the author such as copper ore leaching, elimination of arsenic from copper concentrates, recovery of molybdenum in a slag, new usage of slag, and production of elemental sulphur from smelting gas would be presented.