Sulfide ores roasting

Sulfur dioxide Acid manufacture, sulfide ore roasting, plant frimigation, power generation (coal or oil), black shale oxidation in iron ore mines... 

Selenium is found in a few rare minerals such as crooksite and clausthalite. In years past it has been obtained from flue dusts remaining from processing copper sulfide ores, but the anode metal from electrolytic copper refineries now provide the source of most of the world s selenium. Selenium is recovered by roasting the muds with soda or sulfuric acid, or by smelting them with soda and niter. 

The principal direct raw materials used to make sulfuric acid are elemental sulfur, spent (contaminated and diluted) sulfuric acid, and hydrogen sulfide. Elemental sulfur is by far the most widely used. In the past, iron pyrites or related compounds were often used but as of the mid-1990s this type of raw material is not common except in southern Africa, China, Ka2akhstan, Spain, Russia, and Ukraine (96). A large amount of sulfuric acid is also produced as a by-product of nonferrous metal smelting, ie, roasting sulfide ores of copper, lead, molybdenum, nickel, 2inc, or others. 

Xinc. Oxidized ores are calcined to drive off water of hydration and carbon dioxide. The sulfide ore is always roasted before smelting. 

Indium is now commercially recovered from the flue dusts emitted during the roasting of Zn/Pb sulfide ores and can also be recovered during the roasting of Fe and Cu sulfide ores. Before 1925 only 1 g of the element was available in the world but production now exceeds 80 000 000 g... 

Bismuth oeeurs mainly as bismite (a-Bi203), bismuthinite (Bi2S3) and bismutite [(Bi0)2C03] very oeeasionally it oeeurs native, in assoeiation with Pb, Ag or Co ores. The main eommereial souree of the element is as a byproduet from Pb/Zn and Cu plants, from whieh it is obtained by special processes dependent on the nature of the main product. Sulfide ores are roasted to the oxide and then reduced by iron or charcoal. Because of its low mp, very low solubiUty in Fe, and fairly high oxidative stability in air, Bi can be melted and cast (like Pb) in iron and steel vessels. Like Sb, the metal is too brittle to roll, draw, or extrude at room temperature, but above 225°C Bi can be worked quite well. 

When sulfide ores are roasted in air two possible reactions may occur ... 

Sulfur dioxide is made commercially on a very large scale either by Ihe combustion of sulfur or H2S or by roasting sulfide ores (particularly pyritc, FeS2) in air (p. 651). It is also produced... 

The modem process uses a potassium-sulfate-promoted vanadium(V) oxide catalyst on a silica or kie,selguhr support. The SO2 is obtained either by burning pure sulfur or by roasting sulfide minerals (p. 651) notably iron pyrite, or ores of Cu, Ni and Zn during the production of these metals. On a worldwide basis about 65% of the SO2 comes from the burning of sulfur and some 35% by the roasting of sulfide ores but in some countries (e.g, the UK) over 95% conies from the former. 

The isolation of zinc, over 90% of which is from sulfide ores, depends on conventional physical concentration of the ore by sedimentation or flotation techniques. This is followed by roasting to produce the oxides the SO2 which is generated is used to produce sulfuric acid. The ZnO is then either treated electrolytically or smelted with coke. In the former case the zinc is leached from the crude ZnO with dil H2SO4, at which point cadmium is precipitated by the addition of zinc dust. The ZnS04 solution is then electrolysed and the metal deposited — in a state of 99.95% purity — on to aluminium cathodes. 

Sulfide ores, after preliminary treatment, most often undergo roasting, that is, heating with air or pure oxygen. With a relatively reactive transition metal such as zinc, the product is the oxide... 

Reality Check That is 1.78 cubic meters. The roasting of sulfide ores is a major source of the gaseous pollutant S02, which contributes to acid rain (Chapter 14). 

Roasting A metallurgical process in which a sulfide ore is heated in air, forming either the free metal or the metal oxide, 539 Rock candy, 17 Rowland, F. Sherwood, 311 Rubber elasticity, 470 Ruminant, 620 Rusting, 87... 

Ni is found in many ores in combination with S, As Sb, the chief sources being the minerals chalcopyrite, pyrrhotite and pentlandite. Ni ores are of two types, sulfide and oxide, the former accounting for two-thirds of the world s consumption. Sulfide ores are refined by flotation and roasting to sintered Ni oxide, and either sold as such or reduced to metal, which is cast into anodes and refined electrolytically or by the carbonyl (Mond) process. Oxide ores are treated by hydrometallurgjcal refining, eg, leaching with ammonia. Much secondary Ni is recovered from scrap (Refs 6 7) 1... 

About 70% of the western world s supply of nickel comes from iron and nickel sulfide ores that were brought close to the surface nearly 2 billion years ago by the violent impact of a huge meteor at Sudbury, Ontario. The ore is first roasted (heated in air) to form nickel(II) oxide, which is reduced to the metal either elec-trolytically or by reaction with hydrogen gas in the first step of the Mond process ... 

Mercury and lead are sufficiently easily reduced that roasting the sulfide ore frees the metal. Sulfide ion is the reducing agent, and both O2 and the metal ion gain electrons HgS(,S ) + 02(g) Hg(/) + S02(g) This... 

Sulfide ores usually contain small amounts of mercury, arsenic, selenium, and tellurium, and these impurities volatilize during the ore treatment. All the volatilized impurities, with the exception of mercury, are collected in the dust recovery systems. On account of its being present in low concentrations, mercury is not removed by such a system and passes out with the exit gases. The problem of mercury contamination is particularly pertinent to zinc plants since the sulfidic ores of zinc contain traces of mercury (20-300 ppm). The mercury traces in zinc sulfide concentrates volatilize during roasting and contaminate the sulfuric acid that is made from the sulfur dioxide produced. If the acid is then used to produce phosphatic fertilizers, this may lead to mercury entering the food chain as a contaminant. Several processes have been developed for the removal of mercury, but these are not yet widely adopted. 

Similarly, smelting copper oxide, often derived from roasted copper sulfide ores, proceeds as follows ... 

When galena, a lead ore (composed of lead sulfide) is roasted in a well-ventilated, open furnace, part of the lead is oxidized by air oxygen to lead oxide and the sulfur to sulfur dioxide, which is released into the atmosphere (see Textbox 33) ... 

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