Korea Zinc, lead

With the commissioning of the third Ausmelt technology smelter at Korea Zinc in Onsan, Ausmelt technology lead smelters will process high, medium and low grade feeds for a wide range of sulphide material blends. 

Key reasons for the selection of Ausmelt technology for lead smelting by Metaleurop, Tsumeb and Korea Zinc are the excellent environmental performance, capital and operating cost profiles and process flexibility provided in a compact high intensity smelter system. 

The main driving force for this development is the overall process improvement to be gained by removing many internal secondary recycle streams, thereby freeing the QSL smelter for primary lead smelting activities. This smelter is the third Ausmelt technology smelter installed at Korea Zinc s Onsan complex and will commence operations in the second half of... 

Most lead concentrates contain a portion of zinc and vice versa, so that both metals are impurities from the viewpoint of the prime metal contained in the concentrates. Therefore, each smelting activity inevitably produces disposal materials containing the other metal. Korea Zinc has been committed to maximize metal recoveries in lead and zinc production and to reject all non-valuable materials in the concentrate feed in a stable form such as slag. In this respect, Korea Zinc has developed a concept integrating lead and zinc production plants as shown in Figure 1. 

Lead Smelting Team, Annual Operation Result, Korea Zinc Internal Report. 2000. 

Song, Y. et al., Chemical and mineralogical forms of lead, zinc and cadmium in particle size fraction of some wastes, sediments and soils in Korea, Appl. Geochem., 14, 621, 1999. 

First of all, we need to clarify some definitions. With the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union and the opening up of China, there is a clear need now to look at developments in the lead and zinc industries in global terms i.e., including every country in the world. However, in looking at historic development trends, one encounters the problem of consistency and accuracy of reporting in the former communist countries, particularly the Soviet Union, as well as continuing problems in the collection and collation of data in some of these countries and in China. For this reason, we continue to make the distinction between the transitional economies, which we define as China, North Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, the Former Soviet Union (FSU) and the Warsaw Pact countries of Eastern Europe, and the Western World which comprises all other countries. Much of the subsequent discussion refers solely to the Western World but, where possible, we also quote global numbers and/or numbers for the transitional economies. 

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