Recovery Of Copper From Copper Blast Furnace Slag

Secondary copper blast furnace slag was treated with carbon to derive the conditions for maximum recovery of copper with a minimum simultaneous reduction of iron oxide. Experiments were carried out to study the effect of temperature, carbon and CaO additions to the slag on the efficient recovery of copper. A two-stage reduction process was also employed to study the efficiency of copper recovery and the results were compared with those of single-stage reduction. The maximum recovery of copper in alloy phase was obtained with 5 % initial carbon in the slag, 2% CaO addition to the slag and at a reducing temperature of 1573 K. Higher grade of the alloy phase with respect to copper was obtained by employing a two-stage reduction process. The results obtained in this study are comparable to those of the earlier research on the recovery of copper from reverberatory furnace discard slags.