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Copper Smelting and Refining at Naoshima Smelter.

1993; Volume: 109; Issue: 12 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2473/shigentosozai.109.959

1880-6244

阿島 俊一,

Metallurgy and Cultural Artifacts

The Naoshima Smelter and Refinery, which is located in the Seto Inland Sea, about 200 kilometers west of Osaka, has three major activities such as copper and lead smelting and refining, and also precious metals refining. As for the copper division, two old smelter lines, i.e. conventional reverberatory furnace line and small continuous line, were in operation during 80's. In November 1989, it was decided to replace the two old smelters with new larger continuous smelter to modernize and make more efficient the overall smelter operations. The construction work took one and half years to be completed and the operation of the new plant was started in May 1991. At the same time the existing two smelters were shutdown. Moreover the copper tankhouse was expanded by two blocks, 64 commercial cells, for the purpose to fill somewhat the gap of production capacity between smelter and refinery. By this expansion, the cathode production capacity was increased from former 13, 800 to 15, 500 mtpm including the slight increase of current density.This paper introduces the current operations of copper at Naoshima.