Modern Copper Smelting: being lectures delivered at Birmingham University, greatly extended and adapted and with and introduction on the history, uses and properties of copper.Levy, Donald M.
Science
Modern Copper Smelting: being lectures delivered at Birmingham University, greatly extended and adapted and with and introduction on the history, uses and properties of copper.
Levy, Donald M.
Copper -- Metallurgy
At Copperhill, Tenn., the converters are charged from ladles which are
filled from the blast-furnace settlers situated at the other side of
the furnace-building, whilst at the most modern large plant, at Tooele,
Utah, the matte is run directly from the reverberatory furnaces to the
converters along launders which are nearly 80 feet long and inclined at
about 7 in 100. This method avoids all the handling of matte by cranes
and ladles with the attendant troubles of skulls, breaks-down, spills,
etc., and no difficulty has been found in keeping the channel free and
open, nor in supplying matte at a sufficiently high temperature. At
Anaconda and Tooele, the side of the converter-shop situated opposite
to the converters is devoted to the refining and casting furnaces and
to the slag-casting machines.
=Modifications of Converter Practice.=—(1) _David’s Best Selecting
Process._—David devised a special form of converter and suggested
a method for conducting in the converter, instead of in the
reverberatory furnace, the operations of the best “selecting process”
on the principles of the old Welsh practice. The method embodied the
converting of the matte somewhat beyond the white metal stage, by
which means a small quantity of metallic copper was produced, in which
the whole of the gold and silver values and most of the impurities
collected, the remaining white metal being left tolerably pure. The
metallic copper, thus obtained, was run into a side pocket in the
lining and tapped from there, the rest of the pure white-metal was
blown up to pure best-select copper.
[Illustration: Fig. 68.—General View of Converter Shop, Anaconda.]
The method is, however, too specialised for ordinary commercial copper
smelting, especially when electrolytic refining of the crude metal can
be conveniently arranged for.
(2) _The Haas Converter._—The Haas converter is spherical in form,
and the tuyere holes through the lining are arranged at such an angle
as to lessen the pressure required for the forcing of air through the
metal. It is claimed for this form that it ensures better mixing of the
materials and more even wear on the lining, by imparting a swirling
motion to the bath.
References.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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