Essay on smelting

Viscosities of slags are important, because they allow the selection of an oxide melt that will flow readily and, perhaps more importantly, allow matte or metal to separate well from the slag. Suspended matte has been found to be one of the major causes of high-copper losses to slags.

The degrading quality of available ores emphasizes the need for improved smelter plant operation. Two reasons justify concentrating on converter operation. First, the main bottlenecks in smelter operation result from converter constraints. Secondly, converter operation strongly influences copper yield and loss.

Automating scheduling provides advisory information to operators. Smelters present a challenging optimization problem where the harsh environment often prevents obtaining mineral information and measurement data, the data is highly uncertain or measurements are severely delayed.

It has been customary since early times in copper smelting, when acid refractories were used universally, to add SiO2 to form a slag with the iron that has been oxidized. This is still the most common practice today, though many furnaces now use basic refractories.