Characteristics and utilisation of copper slag—a review

Abstract

Copper slag, which is produced during pyrometallurgical production of copper from copper ores contains materials like iron, alumina, calcium oxide, silica etc. For every tonne of metal production about 2.2 ton of slag is generated. Dumping or disposal of such huge quantities of slag cause environmental and space problems. During the past two decades attempts have been made by several investigators and copper producing units all over the world to explore the possible utilisation of copper slag. The favourable physico-mechanical characteristics of copper slag can be utilised to make the products like cement, fill, ballast, abrasive, aggregate, roofing granules, glass, tiles etc. apart from recovering the valuable metals by various extractive metallurgical routes. This paper gives a review of characteristics of copper slag as well as various processes such as pyro, hydro and combination of pyro-hydrometallurgical methods for metal recovery and preparation of value added products from copper slag.