Thermodynamic and Experimental Substantiation of Comprehensive Processing of Zinc Sulfide Ore and Its Concentration Tailings to Extract Non-Ferrous Metals and Produce a Silicon Ferroalloy

Abstract

This article presents the results of thermodynamic and experimental studies on the joint processing of a mixture of Shalkiya deposit zinc–lead sulfide ore and its concentration tailings in the presence of coke and magnetite. Using the HSC-6.0 software package, it was established by thermodynamic modeling that the silicon-containing products of the SiO2 reduction in the system under consideration are FeSi, Si, Fe3Si, Fe5Si3, FeSi2, FeSi2.33, and SiOg, which, based on the starting reduction temperature, form an increasing series: Fe3Si (1200 °C); Fe5Si3, Si (1400 °C); and SiOg, FeSi2, FeSi2.33 (1500 °C). The smelting of the zinc–lead sulfide ore and concentration tailings mixture in the case of replacing 55% of the iron contained in the magnetite concentrate with steel shavings iron allowed us to produce FeSi45 ferrosilicon (41.9%–42.1% Si), with the extraction of 85% of the silicon in it, and sublimates containing 26.03% zinc and 13.47% lead, with the extraction of 97% of the zinc and 99% of the lead in them. In comparison with the initial ore-tailings mixture, the resulting sublimates are 11.83 times richer in zinc.