A New Copper Scrap Fire-Refining Concept for Strengthening Arsenic Removal

Arsenic monitoring is a critical issue in the copper-making industry, and its removal at the fire-refining stage is important. However, arsenic is poorly removed in the traditional fire-refining practices. A new “As enrichment—targeted oxidation—slag modifying” process is proposed and experimentally studied in this work. The results showed: (1), arsenic can be readily enriched by the Cu-Pb liquid alloy phase which helps the subsequent oxidation removal; (2), SiO 2 and NaHCO 3 were used as fluxes in the four-phase fire-refining process (Cu phase/Cu-Pb alloy phase/slag phase/gas phase). Fe, S, and Pb could be easily removed, and the removal efficiencies of As, Sb, and Bi were clearly improved; and (3) when treating a crude copper with 0.45 wt.% As under optimized conditions, 93.6% Cu was recovered, and the removal efficiencies of As, Sb, and Bi were 33.2%, 57.7%, and 48.6%, respectively.