Looping Sulfide Oxidation

LOOPING SULFIDE OXIDATION PROCESS FOR ANODE COPPER PRODUCTION... 

Kroll Institute for Extractive Metallurgy, Colorado School of Mines, Golden, CO 80401 Keywords Copper Smelting, Anode Copper, Flash Smelting, Looping Sulfide Oxidation ... 

Figure 2. Generalized Looping Sulfide Oxidation" flow sheet for copper production...

A key highlight of Looping Sulfide Oxidation is the way in which desulfurization is uncoiqjled from anode copper refining and slag production. By performing complete... 

Figure 8. Flow sheet for Looping Sulfide Oxidation with energy input and capture... 

The Looping Sulfide Oxidation process shows great potential in copper smelting to achieve the desired anode product, quality, and yields with significant reduction in the net energy consumption of these processes. The LSO technologies can be carried out in readily available... 

Looping Sulfide Oxidation Process for Anode Copper Production.37... 

This case study on oxidation of sodium sulfide illustrates the design of a variety of gas-liquid reactors and compares their performances. Bubble column reactors are particularly attractive, as they offer advantages such as simplicity of construction and operation, but they suffer from such drawbacks as high pressure drop and backmixing in the liquid phase. To reduce the pressure drop, two modifications have been considered an external-loop air-lift reactor and a horizontal sparger reactor. Both result in substantial energy savings (because of low AP) under similar conditions of capacity and conversions in the gas and liquid phases. 

Bolchem process. The concentrated 99 wt.% sulfuric acid comes from the absorption part of the acid plant and it oxidizes the mercury at an ambient temperature. The resulting mercury-containing acid is diluted to 80%, and the mercury is precipitated as insoluble cinnabar (HgS) with sodium thiosulfate. After filtering off the mercury sulfide the cleaned acid is returned to the absorption column. No acid is consumed in the process the mercury sulfide is only in an internal circulation loop. 

Tian H, Simonyi T, Poston J, Siriwardane R. Effect of hydrogen sulfide on chemical looping combustion of coal-derived synthesis gas over bentonite-supported metal-oxide oxygen carriers. Ind Eng Chem Res 2009 48 8418. 

Different ratios of CuO and O2 (in air) were tested to meet four criteria in the hopes of lowering the net energy footprint (1) using O2 from air yields an exothermic reaction, which lets the reaction be run autogenously at reaction temperature (2) CuO as an oxidizer can be regenerated exothermically from the Cu produced and looped back to the first furnace (3) replacing the majority of the air fed with CuO reduces the inclusion of excess N2, thus increasing the flue gas SO2 concentration (4) complete removal of sulfides in the concentrate. Equation 5 is the final result of this optimization that meets all four of the aforementioned criteria. 

McHugh, L.F., Balliett, R., Mozolic, J.A., 2008, The Sulfide Ore Looping Oxidation Process An Alternative to Current Roasting and Smelting Practice. Journal of Metals (July) 84-87. 

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