Lead Smelting and Refining, With Some Notes on Lead Mining
Science
Lead Smelting and Refining, With Some Notes on Lead Mining
Lead -- Metallurgy; Lead mines and mining
On a charge averaging 12 per cent. lead and 33 oz. silver per ton,
an increase of 3 per cent. in the extraction of lead and 1 per
cent. in the extraction of silver would correspond to 25c. and 35c.
respectively, reckoning lead at 3.5c. per lb., and silver at 60c. per
oz. In this, however, it is assumed that all lead-bearing ores will
be desulphurized by this process, which practically will hardly be
the case. A good deal of pyrites, containing only a little lead, will
doubtless continue to be roasted in Brückner cylinders, and other
mechanical furnaces, which are better adapted to the purpose than are
the lime-roasting pots. Moreover, a certain proportion of high-grade
lead ore, which is now smelted raw, will be desulphurized outside of
the furnace, at additional expense. It is comparatively simple to
estimate the probable benefit of the Huntington-Heberlein process in
the case of smelting works which treat principally a single class of
ore, but in such works as those in Colorado and Utah, which treat a
wide variety of ores, we must anticipate a combination process, and
await results of experience to determine just how it will work out.
It should be remarked, moreover, that my estimates do not take into
account the royalty on the process, which is an actual debit, whether
it be paid on a tonnage basis or be computed in the form of a lump sum
for the license to its use.
However, in view of the immense tonnage of ore smelted annually for
the extraction of silver and lead, it is evident that the invention of
lime-roasting by Huntington and Heberlein was an improvement of the
first order in the metallurgy of lead.
In the case of non-argentiferous galena, containing 65 per cent. of
lead (as in southeastern Missouri), comparison may be made with the
slag-roasting and blast-furnace smelting of the ore. Here, no saving
in cost of roasting may be reckoned and no gain in the speed of the
blast furnaces is to be anticipated. The only savings will be in
the increase in the extraction of lead from 92 to 98 per cent., and
the elimination of matte-roasting, which latter may be reckoned as
amounting to 50c. per ton of ore. The extent of the advantage over
the older method is so clearly apparent that it need not be computed
any further. In comparison with the Scotch-hearth bag-house method of
smelting, however, the advantage, if any, is not so certain. That
method already saves 98 per cent. of the lead, and on the whole is
probably as cheap in operation as the Huntington-Heberlein could be
under the same conditions. The Huntington-Heberlein method has replaced
the old roast-reaction method at Tarnowitz, Silesia, but the American
Scotch-hearth method as practised near St. Louis is likely to survive.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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