Pyrometallurgical Reduction of Copper Slag with Biochar for Metal Recovery

Large amounts of slag are generated during pyrometallurgical processing in copper production. Due to the presence of valuable elements, the improper disposal of huge quantities of copper slag produced, results in significant loss of resources as well as environmental issues. Analyses of the copper slag show that it contains valuable metals, particularly copper and nickel. In this work, four biochars were employed as fossil-free reducing agents to recover valuable metals from the slag. Reduction experiments were performed in a vertical furnace at temperatures 1250, 1300 and 1350 °C for 60 min in order to investigate the effect of temperature. Moreover, the effect of time on reduction progress was studied at 1250 °C and the concentrations of CO and CO₂ in the off-gas were measured with a gas analyzer. Copper slag was reacted with metallurgical coke for comparison and the products were analyzed with EPMA and LA-ICPMS. The results revealed that reduction rapidly progresses to the formation of metal alloy within 10 min. Valuable metals like copper, nickel and arsenic were the first to be reduced to the metal phase. As reduction time increased, iron was also reduced and combined with the metal droplet. The use of biochar as reductant was shown to be more effective than coke especially at lower temperatures. In addition, thermodynamic modelling was performed with FactSage and HSC and compared with the experimental results. The simulations with HSC showed the sequence of reactions taking place and the calculations by FactSage were in agreement with the experiments. Graphical Abstract: (Figure presented.)