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By Richard Sillitoe

"The paper point out the zinc in the epithermal environmet. The zinc deposits are well known in a variety of sedimentary settings as well as in association with igneous centers, but have attracted little attention in theepithermal environment. Nevertheless, zinc accompanied by gold and silver occurs in several styles of both high- and intermediate-sulfidation epithermal mineralization. However, low-sulfidation deposits are everywhere zinc-poor. High-grade epithermal zinc deposits are hosted by carbonate rocks in transition zones between the HS and IS environments, whereas large tonnages of lowgrade epithermal zinc mineralization of either HS or IS type occur in diatreme breccias or impregnate lacustrine sedimentary rocks around volcanic centers."

Apr 24, 2001

By R. A. Young

Zinc metal production in the operating plants in the United States during 1948 was approximately equal to that of the year 1947, although new developments during the year assure higher output in 1949, if economic conditions are favorable. In the Western plants, the man-power shortage was almost completely overcome and new capacity has been or is in the process of being added to three plants; thus by December of 1948 daily zinc metal production had risen to the highest point since May of 1944 despite strikes in one large primary smelter and in one secondary plant.

Jan 1, 1949

By Gary A. Wickham

In the zinc industry, this past decade has seen both prosperity and depression. Significant changes have occurred throughout the world in mining, smelting, refining, and marketing. This paper will review many of the industrywide changes of recent years and the potential impact for 1990s. In addition to an historical review of supply and demand are discussion of technology considerations for zinc and zinc based products, effects of geographical shifting of markets, and projections for the 1990s.

Jan 1, 1990

IN welcoming the attending members of the Ameri-can Zinc Institute's Ninth Annual Meeting to St. Louis on April 18, the president of the Chamber of Commerce stressed the notable progress that had been made during nine years, marked by many price de-pressions and internal dissensions, while controversies between miners and smeltermen threatened to wreck the organization, prices dropped, and consumption grew languid for want of organized publicity and research. The reports and recommendations of Percy B. Butler, chairman of the Adjustment Committee, and F. C. Wallower, chairman of the Galvanizing Committee, might well be adopted as the institute's objectives. In reply to the speeches of welcome to St. Louis, Arthur Thacher reminded the delegates that the cor-ner stone of progress in the mineral industries was laid by the formation of the American Institute of Mining Engineers in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., in 1871, and the dedication of that organization to the exchange of ideas and methods of the winning of metals and non-metals from their crude state. The activities of the American Zinc Institute constitute, he said, a valuable phase of that work. Mr. Thacher forecast the treat-ment of 1 per cent zinc ore. After the reading of the report of the board of directors, in which Scott Turner and Louis Boschern were named as honorary members of the institute, a survey of world zinc conditions by A. J. M. Sharpe of London was presented. He held pres-ent conditions in China responsible for much of the present depression in zinc. World stocks on, April 1, 1927, were estimated as 52,900 metric tons. Adolph Boldt's paper on "Solidarity in Industry" was followed by a survey of the Tri-State district by Otto Ruhl, who emphasized the importance to the dis-trict of the organization of the Tri-State section of the A.I.M.E., which already has 135 members and asso¬ciates. He also mentioned .that flotation in the Tri¬State field is adding 1500 tons of concentrate to the weekly production. "Mining Economics" was the subject of Julian D. Conover, secretary of the Tri-State Zinc and Lead Ore Producers Association. He gave a detailed report on the costs of mining and milling in the district.

Jan 5, 1927

Published information on technical and market developments in the uses of zinc tends to dwell very largely on two groups of uses of zinc - zinc coatings (mainly galvanising) and zinc casting alloys. These two groups account for two-thirds of primary zinc consumption. However, if total zinc consumption is taken into consideration, coatings and casting account for a little over half the total. Either way, the health - or otherwise - of these 'other' uses of zinc can have a substantial effect on the industry as a whole. The aim of this paper is to put the whole market picture for zinc into better focus, concentrating on the factors which can affect consumption in the 'other half' of zinc's markets: ò brass - the third most important market for zinc at around one million tonnes - responds to changes in the economic cycle. It has seen substantial changes in the balance between different forms of semi products, and, in Europe at least, some real market gains; ò zinc sheet - one of the original uses of zinc in Europe - has grown substantially in some countries, but remains almost unknown elsewhere; and ò zinc pigments and compounds are so numerous that - barring the substitution of zinc oxide in rubber - major overall changes in the market are unlikely. The paper examines these markets and assesses their potential and implications for zinc markets as a whole.

Jan 1, 1993

By Frank G. Breyer

C ONDITIONS have not been favorable for new developments in any line. It has been a period, how- ever in which recent developments have been subjected to the severest tests. Those which have been able to hold their own in the severe competition of 1932 must be considered fully proved commercial processes. The continuous vertical-muffle retort plant at Palmer- ton is reported to have been in operation at practically full capacity throughout the year. The high quality of metal produced and the low operating costs are factors which have kept this plant running when many of the older furnaces were shut down. The plant at Meadow- brook, W. Va., is also reported to have been in steady operation throughout the year. Average retort life is said to be better than two years with about three-quarters of the original retorts still in operation after 2 ½ years.

Jan 1, 1933

By F. G. BREYER

ZINC metallurgists continue to follow with keen interest reports of successful results from the continuous retort plants at Palmerton, Pa., and Meadowbrook. W. Va. The new process had already demonstrated its ability to reduce the lead content of the metal and to effect savings in labor and fuel. The past year has shown that the retorts themselves can he built to last long enough so that the retort cost per ton of metal is lower than in past practice with small horizontal re- torts. A number of the latest type of retorts are reported to have been in continuous operation for over 18 months without a failure and are said to be still in good condition. This seems a complete answer to the last question which remained before continuous zinc smelting could he pronounced commercially practicable.

Jan 1, 1932

By W. M. Peirce

WITH the supply of zinc, like that of most other nonferrous metals, inadequate to meet the demand, efforts to increase domestic ore supplies and production capacity have been of primary interest. No major sources of new ore have been disclosed during the year but improvements have been reported in facilities for mining and concentrating ores from existing mines. The American Zinc, Lead and Smelting Co. has announced its intention of erecting a new mill in the Ouray district of Colorado. The Consolidated Mining and Smelting Co. of Canada is reported to be planning improvements costing $3,000,000 to its Sullivan mine and concentrator at Kimberley, B.C., where the sink-float process is to be used for preliminary ore treatment. In the reduction field, the St. Joseph

Jan 1, 1947

By J. A. SINGMASTERN

THE New Jersey Zinc Co.'s vertical retort plants are believed to have been in continuous operation through the whole year. At Palmerton metal purer than that made from the same ore in the old plant has been produced and has been able to compete successfully with very pure electrolytic metal in die castings and other special uses where extreme purity is worth money. A new plant using this process was put in production by the Grasselli Chemical Co. at Meadowbrook, W. Va., early in the summer. It is said to be working very satisfactorily. It is understood that this plant will not produce high-grade metal. Two patents issued to Bunce and Mahler (Nos. 1,749,126 and 1,749,127) describe a method of operating the vertical retort so that practically lead-free metal can be obtained from ores containing consider- able lead. The zinc vapors and other gases leaving the reaction zone are filtered through a column of material maintained at a temperature high enough to prevent much zinc from condensing. The filtering medium is either periodically or continuously changed.

Jan 1, 1931

Spencer Gulf takes off from the Great Australian Bight cutting a 200 mile deep wedge of water into the South Australia coastline. A pale winter sun shines yellowly on the choppy surface of this body of water which is progressively more salty as it approaches Port Augusta at the head of the Gulf. Once Port Augusta thrived as a grain port and the speedy clipper ships began or ended their legendary races there. On the eastern shores of Spencer Gulf, farm land spreads away from the water's edge. The western side of the gulf meets marginal grazing land of acacia tree and salt bush. Part way down the gulf, there are two industrial towns facing each other from opposite shores; Port Pirie on the east and Whyalla on the west. These towns are like half brothers, the common parent being the founders of Broken Hill Pty. Ltd., (BHP) who began lead smelting at Port Pirie and discovered iron ore near Whyalla needed for the lead smelting process. The iron deposits later became the inspiration for BHP's iron and steel business.

Jan 10, 1964

By C. M. Haight

The mines of the New Jersey Zinc Co. in New Jersey, are situated in the northern part of Sussex County, at Franklin, formerly Franklin Furnace, and also at Ogdensburg. The mine at Ogdensburg is still in the development stage, but the, mine at Franklin, with which this paper deals chiefly, has been a steady producer of high-grade zinc ores for many years. The town is about 50 miles from New York City, among the foothills -of the Kittatinny Mountains. It is equipped with water supply (filtered and chemically treated), good roads, electric lights, efficient police protection and excellent schools, including a new vocational high school. For a mining community, the conditions and location are far above the average. Franklin Furnace Folio, No. 161 of the U. S. Geological Survey, describes the geology and mineralogy of the district in detail, so that merely an, outline of the main characteristics of the orebody need be given. The

Jan 10, 1917

ROBERT PEELE, New York, N. Y. (written discussion *).-This excellent paper is one of a number of recent detailed descriptions of the, methods and plant in use at prominent mines of the country. The publication of such papers cannot be too highly praised. In the past, the interchange of inside information has often been hampered by the disinclination of some mining companies to permit publication of details of their work. These companies apparently have not realized fully that free discussion is of mutual benefit; that members of mine staffs are aided in. keeping up to date, in improving old methods and devising new ones to meet changes in conditions, and, by a wholesome feeling of rivalry, are stimulated to introduce economies and do better work. In writing this paper, Messrs. Haight and Tillson have packed a large amount of information into a relatively small space, and the numerous illustrations, chiefly reductions of working drawings, are valuable. The authors are also to be commended for their highly detailed Table of Contents, which adds to the usefulness of the, subject matter. The method of mining at Franklin does not fall readily into any of the accepted classifications. It is a combination of shrinkage stoping and mining of the pillars by a modified top-slicing method. Attention may be called to the fact that, in the wider parts of the orebody, the stopes, 17 to 18 ft. (5.2 to 5.5 m.) wide are transverse; in the narrower parts, they are longitudinal, that is, in the direction of the' strike. This varia-tion is made necessary by the shape and character of the deposit, and distinguishes practice at Franklin from that in some of the western mines. The direction of the stops is changed from transverse to longitudinal when the orebody narrows sufficiently to make the length of a transverse stope approximately equal to its width. Some of the longitudinal stopes exceed 120 ft. (36 m.) in length, and when the hanging wall is bad, requiring prompt filling, three operations' proceed simul-taneously in the same stope, viz., ore is broken at one end, while drawing down goes on in the middle, and filling at the other end. Each transverse stope or chamber is begun by a crosscut from foot to hanging wall, which is afterward enlarged to the stone width and to a height of 12 or 15 ft. (3.7 or 4.6 m.). This preliminary work is done only once for each stope, because the stope is carried up far enough to continue stoping

Jan 1, 1918

Cominco Ltd's Polaris Mine in Canada's High Arctic has been successfully mining zinc ore in permafrost since 1981. Mining methods using frozen backfill have been the key to success. The mine is now producing about 60 per cent of the ore from pillars while maintaining high productivities. Annual ore production is just over one million tonnes providing more than 200 000 tonnes of zinc concentrate each year. Cominco Ltd has adapted management and operating practices to suit the harsh environment and the isolated site, and has shown that a profitable development can be carried out in the tough Arctic conditions, with minimum impact on the environment.

Jan 1, 1993

By Arthur A. Center

WAR demand- motivated developments in the zinc industry during 1942. Stocks of Prime Western were built up and High-Grade remained tight. The Prince The Prime Western stocks are expected to be cut down and the demand for High-Grade more easily filled as the Depue reflux plant of the New Jersery Zinc Co. increases - production. Subistition of steel for brass in artillery shell cases will have a considerable effect on the zinc situation of the country one estimate of the saving in zinc in 1943 by this substitution being a little under 100,000 ton, of metal. The metal saved will, of course be High-Grade. If the substitution occurs, the present tight situation in High-Grade may be entirely relieved as new production comes on the market and zinc may find itself approaching a situation as comfortable as that of lead provided the supply of zinc-hearing raw materials is sufficient to keep all reduction plants tip to capacity production. The premium price of the per pound of zinc over set quotas which went into effect early in 1942, helped to bring about the new lead-slag-fuming plant and other new sources of raw materials.

Jan 1, 1943

By J. Tian

"BHP Billiton carried out a pre-feasibility study on the LanPing zinc deposit to evaluate the possibility to jointly develop the zinc deposit into a large-scale zinc project with their Chinese partner. The unique characteristics of the complex LanPing zinc orebody and ore are 1) smithsonite (ZnCO3) as one of major zinc bearing mineral besides sphalerite, 2) varying and irregular oxidation degree of zinc (0 ~ +90%) in the different zone and depth of the deposit, and 3) varying host gangue from limestone/calcite dominant to quartz dominant, which requires a robust and flexible flotation process to recovery zinc from both sulphide and oxide efficiently.The conventional mineral processing flowsheets have been tested on the LanPing samples taken from the various orebodies by various parties during the past 20 years that includes a sequential flotation flowsheet that was tested in a demonstration plant using the mixed ore. The results of the demonstration plant runs show that the conventional oxide flotation using Na2S and amine collectors could achieve 50 ~ 75% of oxide zinc recovery at very high sulphidiser consumption for the mixed ore but the highly oxidised ore did not satisfactorily respond to the flowsheet in terms of performance consistency and efficiency of oxide zinc recovery, which is very crucial to the overall economics of the project."

Jan 1, 2003

By Jürgen Antrekowitsch

Typical zinc oxides recovered from wastes like steel mill dusts and neutral leaching residues are of a low quality because of impurities like fluorine, chlorine, lead and others. Therefore, they are not comparable to technical grade zinc oxides produced in “French” or “American Process”. Some new developments, most of them still in pilot scale, try to establish processes where higher qualities of the product should be achieved. Zinc oxides are not only supposed to be an input material for electrolytic zinc production. Far more, they should find their way into the zinc oxide market as a substitute for technical grade zinc oxides. Furthermore, a new field of application for these oxides has been investigated at the department of Nonferrous Metallurgy, University of Leoben. Because of a higher acceptance concerning different impurities in relation to zinc winning electrolyses, a use in electrolytic galvanizing shows an interesting option. Therefore, synthetic zinc oxides with different impurities were generated to study the effect of these impurities especially on the quality of the zinc layer. Typical steel sheets, as used for car bodies, were electrolytically galvanized and the resulting layer was analysed, as main impurities compounds of fluorine, chlorine, iron, lead and calcium were used for the investigations. Beside the layer quality, the current efficiency and the possible galvanizing speed were examined. The results give an indication, weather such an alternative application can be feasible from a technical and economical point of view or not. 597

Jan 1, 2008

By John J. Porter

UNUSUAL problems have arisen at certain iron blast-furnaces in Virginia through the fact that the ore-supplies, derived from the Oriskany formation, contain from a trace up to 1 per cent. of zinc oxide. Since the technical literature bearing on this subject is very scant, the following notes, based on personal experience, will probably be of value to those of our members who are interested in iron blast-furnace practice. The course of zinc through the blast furnace is readily traced. Entering the throat as zinc oxide, finely disseminated through the ore, it descends unchanged to the fusion-zone, since a temperature of 1,000° C. or more is required for its reduction. At the fusion-zone, the zinc oxide is reduced by solid carbon to metallic zinc, which is set free as vapor and rises with the ascending gases to the cooler zones of the furnace. In cooling through the range of temperature from 1,000° to 500° C. the zinc is re-oxidized according to the reaction Zn + CO2 = ZnO + CO, and the resulting zinc oxide, being in a very fine state of division, is readily carried along by the ascending gases. Portions, however, deposit on the descending stock and are carried down, again to pass through the same cycle of changes. Still other portions deposit on the lining of the stack, and gradually form hard masses of "cadmia." Of the remainder of the zinc oxide, the greater part passes out of the furnace, and is either deposited in the down-comer, dust-trap, stoves, boilers and flues, or passes through the chimney into the atmosphere. A small portion escapes reduction and enters the slag as zinc oxide, while still another portion is absorbed into the lining of the furnace.

Sep 1, 1907

By R. E. Johnson, M. Schipper-Zablotskaja, B. R. Palmer, van Sandwijk A.

A procedure has been developed for the removal of zinc from acid solutions containing aluminum, silicon, calcium, magnesium, sodium, potassium and manganese ions and high concentrations of chloride ions. The first step of the procedure involves the precipitation of aluminum and silicon at pH 4.2. The second step, the removal of the zinc as zinc oxide, was studied in detail to get in- sight into the formation of oxychlorides. A diagram was developed giving the conditions at 75O C under which the formation of oxychlorides is avoided. Under optimal conditions a zinc oxide with less than 0.5 weight percent of chloride can be produced from 11 - 16 g/l chloride solutions.

Jan 1, 1993

By Huanyu Zhang, Zhancheng Guo, Liqiang Fan, Huiqing Tang

"In this study, a simple process has been developed for zinc oxide recovery from RHF (rotary hearth furnace) secondary dust. The results have shown that a high dissolution efficiency of soluble zinc was achieved with water leach at ambient temperature with a liquid/solid ratio of 10/1 in 30min while 20% of the dust was left as solid residue. The rate of dissolution increased slowly after the dissolution efficiency reached 90%. The leaching process was found to be controlled by external diffusion. After separation, zinc was precipitated in leached liquor by introducing a precipitation agent of potassium hydroxide. The resulting solid was purified and dried at 393K. Zinc powder in the form of ZnO with purity of 98.5 mass% was obtained with an average size of 12.4µm.IntroductionThe RHF (rotary hearth furnace) direct reduction process is widely used in many iron and steel enterprises to deal with various metallurgical dusts [l]. The basic principle of this process is that first various metallurgical dusts (BF dust, EAF dust and so on) are pelletized with a coal reductant, and they are then subjected to a fast reduction using RHF after being dried. Highly metallic pellets are produced and at the same time, nonferrous elements such as Zn, Pb, K and Na are evaporated into the RHF flu gas as secondary dust. Zinc is listed by the Enviromnental Protection Agency as one of the 129 priority pollutants. Therefore, recovering zinc from the industrial wastes is important in terms of enviromnental protection [2-3]. On the other hand, nowadays China is in shortage of zinc resource and the annual output from metal recycle only accounts for some 13% of the total zinc resource. There are many ways proposed to recover zinc from various wastes [ 4-7]. The aim of this paper is to recover zinc oxide from RHF secondary dust by a method with water leach followed by caustic precipitation. This work investigated the influence of the leaching temperature and leaching liquid/solid ratio on the zinc recovery efficiency. The process consisted of three stages: (1) leaching with water; (2) liquor/residue separation; and (3) zinc precipitation in caustic milieu."

Jan 1, 2014

By K. Svens, M. Lahtinen, L. Lehtinen

"Outotec's direct leaching process is an atmospheric leaching process for sulphidiczinc concentrates. The direct leaching process, based on special leaching reactors developed by Outokumpu and leaching know-how, is the most economical way to produce electrolytic zinc. The newest industrial-scale application of Outotec's direct leaching process will be started up in 2008 in China at Zhuzhou smelter. The process isintegrated to the existing production plant, replacing part of the old production facilities by modern technology and increasing the production capacity significantly. The process equipment supplied by Outotec includes also tailor-made reactors designed on the basisof the work and experience of Outotec Research Centre."

Jan 1, 2008