Copper blister

Tellurium is occasionally found native, but is more often found as the telluride of gold (calaverite), and combined with other metals. It is recovered commercially from the anode muds that are produced during the electrolytic refining of blister copper. The U.S., Canada, Peru, and Japan are the largest Free World producers of the element. 

The major part of this blister copper is further purified electro lytic ally by casting into anodes which are suspended in acidified CUSO4 solution along with cathodes of purified copper sheet. As electrolysis proceeds the pure copper is deposited on the cathodes while impurities collect below the anodes as anode slime which is a valuable source of Ag, Au and other precious metals. 

The solid produced is called blister copper. It has an irregular appearance due to air bubbles that enter the copper while it is still molten. Blister copper is impure, containing small amounts of several other metals. 

Copper is purified by electrolysis. The anode, which may weigh as much as 300 kg, is made of blister copper. The electrolyte is 0.5 to 1.0 M Q1SO4, adjusted to a pH of about 0 with sulfuric acid. The cathode is a piece of pure copper, weighing perhaps 150 kg. The halfreactions are... 

Thus the net effect of electrolysis is to transfer copper metal from the impure blister copper used as one electrode to the pure copper sheet used as the other electrode. Electrolytic copper is 99.95% pure. 

Write a balanced equation to represent the roasting of copper sulfide to form blister copper. ... 

Beta radiation Electron emission from unstable nuclei, 26,30,528 Binary molecular compound, 41-42,190 Binding energy Energy equivalent of the mass defect measure of nuclear stability, 522,523 Bismuth (m) sulfide, 540 Blassie, Michael, 629 Blind staggers, 574 Blister copper, 539 Blood alcohol concentrations, 43t Body-centered cubic cell (BCC) A cubic unit cell with an atom at each comer and one at the center, 246 Bohrmodd Model of the hydrogen atom... 

Copper is refined electrolyticallv by using an impure form of copper metal called blister copper as the anode in an electrolytic cell (Fig. 12.14). The current supply drives the oxidation of the blister copper to copper(II) ions, Cu2+, which are then reduced to pure copper metal at the cathode ... 

The copper product is known as blister copper because of the appearance of air bubbles in the solidified metal. In the hydrometallurgical process, soluble Cu2+ ions are formed by the action of sulfuric acid on the ores. Then the metal is obtained by reducing these ions in aqueous solution either electrolytically or chemically, by using an inexpensive reducing agent that has a more negative standard potential than that of copper, such as hydrogen or iron (see Section 14.3) ... 

The conversion process for the copper matte removes iron, sulfur and other impurities from matte, thereby yielding liquid metallic copper of about 99% purity (blister copper). The slags which come out of converters contain from 2 to 15% copper and must go through treatment for copper recovery, usually by froth flotation of the copper from solidified and slowly cooled slag. 

In the copper production stage, copper sulfide is oxidized to molten copper metal, known as blister copper and so named because when liquid copper cools, the evolution of the residual sulfur and oxygen from the metal as sulfur dioxide gas causes blisters to form on the surface of the metal. The conversion reaction may be shown as ... 

Blister copper, produced from sulfide ores by matte smelting and converting, is refined to the grade known as tough pitch copper by a multistage operation known as fire refining. 

From blister copper, residual sulfur and impurities such as aluminum, silicon, manganese, zinc, tin, iron, nickel, arsenic, antimony and lead are first eliminated by oxidation and slagging. At the end of this stage excess oxygen remains in the partly purified copper, and this is removed by a deoxidation process. 

In the copper electrorefining process, fire refined copper or blister copper is cast to form the anodes and the cathode is either a reusable stainless steel sheet or a thin sheet of electro deposited copper which finally becomes a part of the refined cathode. The electrolyte is an acidified solution of copper sulfate. 

The environmental problem of sulfur dioxide emission, as has been pointed out, is very much associated with sulfidic sources of metals, among which a peer example is copper production. In this context, it would be beneficial to describe the past and present approaches to copper smelting. In the past, copper metallurgy was dominated by reverberatory furnaces for smelting sulfidic copper concentrate to matte, followed by the use of Pierce-Smith converters to convert the matte into blister copper. The sulfur dioxide stream from the reverberatory furnaces is continuous but not rich in sulfur dioxide (about 1%) because it contains carbon dioxide and water vapor (products of fuel combustion), nitrogen from the air (used in the combustion of that fuel), and excess air. The gas is quite dilute and unworthy of economical conversion of its sulfur content into sulfuric acid. In the past, the course chosen was to construct stacks to disperse the gas into the atmosphere in order to minimize its adverse effects on the immediate surroundings. However, this is not an en-... 

Electrolytic copper refining Blister copper Process wastewater Slimes containing impurities such as gold, silver, antimony, arsenic, bismuth, iron, lead, nickel, selenium, sulfur, and zinc... 

The melt copper (matte) is further processed in a converter, where the remaining sulfur and iron is removed by underbath injection of oxygen-enriched air. The resulting so-called blister copper has a copper content of 98%. 

Another major reaction takes place where the copper sulfides are oxidized, resulting in blister copper and sulfur dioxide ... 

Figure 3. An example of correlation between the abundance of low volatile metals in a random set of Karabash snow samples (C) and the calculated volatility of the same pure metals at the temperature of blister copper formation (12600 C). Vertical points correspond to the selected samples K(A)j the data for Si, Cu, and Fe are not considered.

Copper made by reaction 17.50 (blister copper) is about 98% pure but may be refined electrolytically. As far as the copper itself is concerned, the two stages could be represented as... 

Blister copper - [COPPER] (Vol 7) - [RECYCLING - METALS - NONFERROUS METALS] (Vol 20)... 

Native copper ore is crushed, concentrated by washing with water, smelted, and cast into bars. Oxide and carbonate ores are treated with carhon in a smeller. Sulfide ore treatment is complex, hut. in brief, consists of smelling to a matte of cuprous sulfide, ferrous sulfide, and silica, which molten matte is treated in a converter by the addition of lime and air is forced under pressure through the mass. The products are blister copper, ferrous calcium silicate slag, and SO . Refining is conducted by electrolysis, and the anode mud is treated to obtain the gold and silver. See Fig. I. 

In the electrolytic refining of copper, blister copper is used as the anode and oxidized. The copper(II) ion that is produced from its oxidation is then reduced at the cathode to give a metal with a much higher purity. The impurities in the blister copper include iron, nickel, silver gold, cobalt, and trace amounts of other metals. The material that is not... 

The copper product is known as blister copper because of the appearance of air bubbles in the solidified metal (Fig. 16.15). 

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