Metallurgy of Complex Pb, Cu and Zinc Sulfides

Abstract

For the winning of Pb, Cu and from sulfides ores by conventional methods, it is essential that these be beneficiated to high grade concentrates. The ore mine- rals in polymetallic and complex deposits are often found to be in close mutual penetration with each other and to the non-metallic gangue.In many cases where the attempts have been made to concentrate these ores; it is either difficult to obtain - a suitable grade of the concentrate by conventional flotation methods or the recovery of metals into the respective concentrate is poor. Zinc that finds its way to a copper concentrate is always discarded in the slag as a waste, while copper in a Pb concentrate leads to serious smelting problems. In such cases the cost of production by a smelting process becomes unfavourable and new approaches to process these ores become more attractive. Hydrometallurgical processes, based on leach-ing and precipitation alone, or in combination with conv-entional extractive metallurgical methods will play an important role in meeting the requirements of such complex ores. Such processes can more easily be adopted to small scale operation than conventional smelting and refining.