An Innovative Oxygen-Enriched Flash Smelting Technology for Lead Smelting and Its Industrial Application

This paper introduces an oxygen-enriched flash smelting (OFS) process for lead smelting, aiming to address the limitations of traditional bath smelting methods. The objective is to present the advantages of OFS, including wide adaptability, high yield, low energy consumption, and minimal uncontrolled emissions, along with significant metals recovery. Methodologically, the research involved testing various compositions, specifically focusing on the effects of calcium oxide (CaO) and the mass ratios of iron oxide (FeO) to silicon dioxide (SiO2) and CaO to SiO2. The results demonstrated that increasing CaO effectively reduced lead content in the slag, with optimal mass ratios identified at 1.15 for FeO-to-SiO2 and 0.6 for CaO-to-SiO2. Notably, the OFS process was able to decrease residual lead in slag to between 4% and 10% when processing materials with 30% lead content. After subsequent zinc volatilization, the concentrations of lead, zinc, silver, gold, and copper in the final slag were substantially lowered. The process achieved total recoveries of over 98% for lead, 90% for zinc, and 99.5% for both silver and gold, among others, indicating its significant potential for industrial application.