1999 marked the 50th anniversary of the Outokumpu flash-smelting process. Originating during the post-World War II energy crisis, flash smelting is a high-intensity process developed to attain ever-increasing throughputs and intensities. Many innovations and continuous development ensued during the next 50 years before today's stateof-the-art copper-making process chain and environmental benchmarking technology (e.g., Outokumpu flash smelting, KennecottOutokumpu flash converting, and flash technology) became possible. This article reviews how Outokumpu flash furnace design, especially cooling for higher heat loads, has improved over the years.
Copper matte converting is the key step to ensure high primary copper recovery in the smelting chain. Its development and the fundamental research carried out over the past decades will be reviewed. The operational challenges and environmental concern of batch-wise Peirce-Smith Converting vessel have induced more than 50 years ago attempts to continuous converting process which have materialized in the last two decades in the flash converting technology, utilized currently in one smelter in USA and three smelters in China. Their annual copper production is in excess of 1.5 Mt, and selected fundamental studies behind this major technological invention will be examined.
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