1.

Pyrometallurgical Extraction

Pyrometallurgy
The Earths crust is the source of almost all the metals.
The metals average concentrations in the Earths
crust are relatively small. Fortunately natural phenomena, such as igneous intrusions and sedimentary
deposits, have produced local areas of enrichment of
metallic minerals, i.e., ore bodies.
Many factors must be taken into consideration to
determine if it is economically viable to explore an ore
body, such as:
metal content of the ore;
commercial value of the metal;
levels of undesirable and desirable impurities;
location of the ore body in relation to fuel, electricity, and labor supplies;
transportation costs.
Once it is determined that an ore body is economically viable, the choice of the extractive metallurgy
method to be used to explore this ore body must be
made. Extractive metallurgy methods are divided into
three categories: pyrometallurgy, hydrometallurgy,
and electrometallurgy. Pyrometallurgy employs high
temperatures to carry out smelting and refining
operations to extract metals from their minerals.
Hydrometallurgy uses aqueous solutions to separate
the desired metals. Finally, electrometallurgy employs
electrical energy to extract and refine metals. Several
factors play a role in determining the extractive
method to be used. Among the most important factors
are initial capital investment, energy requirements,
environmental constraints, rate of chemical reaction,
production cost, and purity grade of the metal
produced. A comparison of the three extractive
metallurgical methods is shown in Table 1.
Pyrometallurgical methods are commonly used to
process high-grade ores, such as iron ore, while
hydrometallurgical and electrometallurgical methods
are used in combination to extract low-grade ores,
such as zinc. It is possible, however, to convert a lowgrade ore into a high-grade ore (or concentrate) by
using mineral dressing techniques (i.e., comminution
and concentration by separation processes). The concentrate can then be agglomerated and used as a feed
material into a pyrometallurgical method.

Pyrometallurgical extraction involves several processes: roasting, carbothermic reduction, reduction of

sulfide ores, and metallothermic reduction. The selection of the processes to be used depends mainly on
the composition of the concentrate and the thermodynamic, kinetic, and environmental constraints
associated with each process.
Some noble metals such as gold, silver, and platinum
occur in their native state (or in metallic state).
Consequently, they need only to be liberated and
separated from the gangue materials (i.e., useless
minerals associated with any ore) before they can be
refined. Other metals occur as oxides and\or sulfides,
and they need to be reduced before they can be refined.
Oxides are usually carbothermically reduced by using
coke, coal, or natural gas as reducing agents. Sulfides
cannot be reduced by carbon or hydrogen because
metal sulfides are more stable than carbon sulfides (CS
and CS ), carbon oxosulfides (COS), and hydrogen
# S). Therefore, the first step in processing
sulfide (H
# is to convert them into a more desirable
metal sulfides
product that can be reduced. This conversion step is
known as roasting.
1.1 Roasting
There are several different types of roasting processes.
The most commonly used roasting processes are:
(a) Dead roasting. Dead roasting is the conversion
of sulfides into oxides by heating the concentrate
under an oxidizing atmosphere.
2MSj3O l 2MOj2SO
#
#
MSj2O l MOjSO
#
$

(1)
(2)

(b) Sulfating roasting. Sulfating roasting is the conversion of sulfides into soluble sulfates. This conversion is also accomplished by heating the sulfide

Table 1
Comparison between pyrometallurgy, hydrometallurgy, and electrometallurgy.
Factors
Initial capital investment
Energy requirements
Environmental constraints
Rate of chemical reaction
Production cost
Level of purity

Pyrometallurgy

Hydrometallurgy

Electrometallurgy

very high
high
emissions of CO,
SO , and NOx
# high
low
low

low
low
toxic chemicals

intermediate
high
gas emissions

low
intermediate
high (uses electrorefining)

intermediate
high
high