Study on Green Enrichment and Separation of Copper and Iron Components from Copper Converter Slag

AbstractA green selective enrichment and separation technique for recovering copper and iron valuable components from Daye copper converter slag is presented, by adopting the high-temperature modifying method. Thermodynamic calculation shows that the copper and iron components were individually enriched as metallic copper and magnetite phase in the temperature range of 1500-1700K, and were precipitated and grown during the cooling process. The experimental results show that the volume fraction of magnetite could be from 20% to 50%, and the grain size from 20 to 60μm, as the conditions were modification temperature at 1653K, air flow rate 7 L/min, oxidation time 6min and cooling rate 1°C/min. Most of the copper component was deposited at the bottom of modified slag as the metallic copper block, and the others were distributed as the form of fine grain in the modified slag. The iron concentrate of 60.19%(ω)Fe at 90% recovery rate and copper concentrate of 92.97%(ω)Cu at 62.32% recovery rate could be obtained by gravity and two stage magnetic separation