Kosaka smelter was put into operation in 1900 to treat ores mined nearby. Since then main raw material for the copper smelter has been coarse ores mined in the old time or concentrates originating from a finely mixed sulfide mineral, so-called "Black Ore". Even now the copper concentrates contain a high level of impurities e.g. galena, sphalerite, barite and other unfavorable elements from a metallurgical point of view. In 1967 copper smelting process was changed from the conventional blast furnace to the Outokumpu type flash smelting furnace. During thirteen years operation of the flash furnace, we have continuously endeavored to solve problems in many aspects, including refining, for the purpose of (1) getting higher quality products from complex and/or dirty copper resources, (2) yielding more elements at a higher recovery rate, (3) saving operation costs especially energy cost to overcome successive oil crises, and (4) meeting strict environmental regulations. It is a distinctive feature of Kosaka Smelter that the copper smelter has a really close relationship to an adjacent lead smelter in handing intermediates to each other. This combination enables us to recover twelve kinds of products in total, namely, copper, gold, silver, lead, bismuth, antimony, selenium, tellurium, gallium, indium, blue vitriol, and sulfuric acid. Current production is 4,000 metric tons of copper per month. In this paper improvements and modifications during the last decade are explained in detail.
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