Recovery of certain non-ferrous metals from Industrial by-products

THE resources of the important non-ferrous metals- namely, lead, zinc and copper-are very lean in our country and large quantities of the same are imported. An idea of the extent of the import during 67--68 is given in Table 1. Some zinc, lead and copper are being produced in the country but the total production meets only less than 40% of the total requirement. So, recovery of these metals from industrial byproducts and wastes in a form which is useful again in the same or similar industry is a nece-ssity. This will substantially reduce the quantity of imports and at the same time improve the economic feasi-bility of the processes. It is true that the metal thus recovered is only secondary in nature and would yield less
favourable results than the primary metal. Still, whenever
it is not disadvantageous, attempts should be made to adopt recovery processes and use the recovered metal.