Australia refined production

Brazil continues to be a regular importer of lead scrap from the EEC and USA, although the volume traded has declined recently, due to falling domestic refined production. A number of South and South East Asian countries are also important international buyers of lead scrap and this trade, conversely, has expanded greatly over the last few years. Major importers include South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Indonesia and India. The main suppliers are Australia, Japan, Europe and the USA, but there is also a relatively small volume of intra-Asian trade. 

In Australia, bismuth is mined as a by-product of copper ores by Peko-Wallsend Ltd. and exported for refining. Bolivia is the only country in the world where concentrations of bismuth are high enough that it is mined for its own value. The Tasna mine in Bolivia is thus unique. This mine was shut down for most of the 1980s, however, because the free-market price for bismuth dropped to a low value in the late 1970s and remained low through the early 1980s. 

Lowndes, A.G. (1956). South Pacific Enterprise The Colonial Sugar Refining Co. Sydney, Australia Angus Robertson, 500 pp. Matheme, RJ. (1974). The effect of number of cultivations on sugarcane production in Louisiana. Proc. Am. Soc. Sugarcane Technol., 46 109-112. 

Table 1 gives data on the current world production of cobalt. In 2002, approximately 50% of cobalt produced worldwide was a by-product of nickel refining, while some 18% was obtained from refining secondary products and scrap metal. Newfound ore deposits in Australia and Africa are expected to add significantly to world production, with six new refining operations having been commissioned in these areas between 1999 and 2001. As can be seen in Table 2, the major use of cobalt is as a component of superalloys, which are designed for use at elevated temperatures. 

Primary and secondary sources of lead exist in the United States and throughout the world [29], U.S. mine production of lead in concentrate is approximately 450,000-500,000 metric tons per year, which represents approximately 15% of the world production. Other countries with significant mine production of lead include Australia, Canada, China, Mexico, and Peru. Refining of secondary lead is dominated by the U.S. production, although other major sources include Canada, China, France, Germany, Italy, Peru, Spain, and the United Kingdom. In the United States, approximately 79% of the current lead refinery production is derived from secondary sources. Worldwide, secondary sources... 

A variant of this process was developed in Australia by AUSMELT in 1998 their process used a closed induction furnace but with an air feed to bum the cadmium in the furnace and recover it in the form of cadmium oxide. The process produced nickel matte which had to be sent to the nickel refiners and highly contaminated cadmium oxides that had to be sent to the producers of primary cadmium. This required a higher investment than closed furnaces and the products extracted were somewhat less effectively recyeled than the nickel-iron and cadmium metal residues. 

Production of refined cadmium in the western world (except of Central and Eastern European countries) in 1993 was approximately 15 000 tons. Japan is the largest producer (2808 tons in 1993), treating concentrates from South Africa, Asia and Australia as well as from its own mines. Production in countries with economies in transition was estimated to be around 4500 tons in 1990, but fell to 3000 tons more recently with more than half produced in the former Soviet Union (OECD, 1994). 

Lead is obtained from mixed lead and zinc ores, where lead after concentration by a series of flotation processes is sintered to oxidize the ore to lead oxide. The oxides are reduced and the metallic lead refined. The worldwide yearly lead production has been constant during the last 10 years, around 3.5 million tons. The most important lead-mining countries are the United States, the former Soviet Union, and Australia as shown in Table 1. In addition to mining lead is produced from scrap. The total world lead production amounted to 5.8 million tons in 1988 [3]. 

Refined lead is produced in a great many countries, but only in 30 or so on any scale. Important dififerences exist in the structure of production between tbe primary and secondary sectors. In the Western World there are about 50 primary lead smelters with a combined capacity of little over 3.1 million tpy however, the ten largest (three each in Europe and North America, and two apiece in Australia and Latin America) account for almost 50 per cent of this. The remainder of refined lead output is produced by 170 or so secondary plants, with a total capacity of approximately 2.75 million tpy. Despite their smaller average scale, the ten largest secondary plants (all of which are in the USA or Europe) still contribute about one-quarter of this total. ... 

Australia, Canada and Mexico have been major suppliers of refined lead since early in the century, based on the processing of local ores. Mexican exports have been rather erratic in recent years, and production problems and strikes in Canada have reinforced Australia s position as largest exporter. 

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