The Role of Research in Pyrometallurgy Technology Development—From Fundamentals to Process Improvements—Future Opportunities

Modelling of liquid phases and metal distributions in copper converters: transferring process fundamentals to plant practice

“…In describing recent advances in the field (Jak 2018a) forshadows the development of ‘Virtual Reactor’ models for pyrometallurgical processing systems. These models would incorporate a number of key components (Jak 2018b) including: Thermodynamic models to predict the thermodynamic direction, driving force, extent and enthalpies of reactions (the latter defining the heat balance); and phase equilibria to describe the states (liquid, solid or gaseous), chemical compositions and proportions of the phases present in each of the process stream; Physical property models to predict viscosities, surface tension, densities and other relevant physico-chemical properties; Micro-kinetics at a scale up to 20–100 micron taking into account the influence of the heterogeneous gas / solid / liquid reactions taking place in pyrometallurgical reactors; Macro-kinetic models to describe fluid flow and heat transfer at the full reactor scale; Plant data accuracy providing reliable information on thermochemistry of the all input and output streams including, but not limited to, temperature, composition, mineralogy; Plant control accuracy to ensure stable operation at selected optimised conditions, and Performance of the reactor within the overall multi-reactor flowsheet. …”