“Rosette” copper is obtained as thin plates of a characteristic
dark-red colour, by pouring water upon the surface of the molten
metal, and removing the crust formed. “Japan” copper is
purple-red in colour, and is formed by casting into ingots,
weighing from six ounces to a pound, and rapidly cooling by
immersion in water. The colour of these two varieties is due to
a layer of oxide. “Tile” copper is an impure copper, and is
obtained by refining the first tappings. “Best-selected” copper
is a purer variety.
Calcination or Roasting and Calcining Furnaces.—The roasting should be conducted so as to eliminate as much of the arsenic and antimony as possible, and to leave just enough sulphur as is necessary to combine with all the copper present when the calcined ore is smelted. The process is effected either in heaps, stalls, shaft furnaces, reverberatory furnaces or muffle furnaces. Stall and heap roasting require considerable time, and can only be economically employed when the loss of the sulphur is of no consequence; they also occupy much space, but they have the advantage of requiring little fuel and handling. Shaft furnaces are in use for ores rich in sulphur, and where it is desirable to convert the waste gases into sulphuric acid. Reverberatory roasting does not admit of the utilization of the waste gases, and requires fine ores and much labour and fuel; it has, however, the advantage of being rapid. Muffle furnaces are suitable for fine ores which are liable to decrepitate or sinter. They involve high cost in fuel and labour, but permit the utilization of the waste gases.
Reverberatory furnaces of three types are employed in calcining copper ores: (1) fixed furnaces, with either hand or mechanical rabbling; (2) furnaces with movable beds; (3) furnaces with rotating working chambers. Hand rabbling in fixed furnaces has been largely superseded by mechanical rabbling. Of mechanically rabbling furnaces we may mention the O’Harra modified by Allen-Brown, the Hixon, the Keller-Gaylord-Cole, the Ropp, the Spence, the Wethey, the Parkes, Pearce’s “Turret” and Brown’s “Horseshoe” furnaces. Blake’s and Brunton’s furnaces are reverberatory furnaces with a movable bed. Furnaces with rotating working chambers admit of continuous working; the fuel and labour costs are both low.
In the White-Howell revolving furnace with lifters—a modification of the Oxland—the ore is fed and discharged in a continuous stream. The Brückner cylinder resembles the Elliot and Russell black ash furnace; its cylinder tapers slightly towards each end, and is generally 18 ft. long by 8 ft. 6 in. in its greatest diameter. Its charge of from 8 to 12 tons of ore or concentrates is slowly agitated at a rate of three revolutions a minute, and in from 24 to 36 hours it is reduced from say 40 or 35% to 7% of sulphur. The ore is under better control than is possible with the continuous feed and discharge, and when sufficiently roasted can be passed red-hot to the reverberatory furnace. These advantages compensate for the wear and tear and the cost of moving the heavy dead-weight.
Shaft calcining furnaces are available for fine ores and permit the recovery of the sulphur. They are square, oblong or circular in section, and the interior is fitted with horizontal or inclined plates or prisms, which regulate the fall of the ore. In the Gerstenhoffer and Hasenclever-Helbig furnaces the fall is retarded by prisms and inclined plates. In other furnaces the ore rests on a series of horizontal plates, and either remains on the same plate throughout the operation (Ollivier and Perret furnace), or is passed from plate to plate by hand (Malétra), or by mechanical means (Spence and M’Dougall).
The M’Dougall furnace is turret-shaped, and consists of a series of circular hearths, on which the ore is agitated by rakes attached to revolving arms and made to fall from hearth to hearth. It has been modified by Herreshoff, who uses a large hollow revolving central shaft cooled by a current of air. The shaft is provided with sockets, into which movable arms with their rakes are readily dropped. The Peter Spence type of calcining furnace has been followed in a large number of inventions. In some the rakes are attached to rigid frames, with a reciprocating motion, in others to cross-bars moved by revolving chains. Some of these furnaces are straight, others circular. Some have only one hearth, others three. This and the previous type of furnace, owing to their large capacity, are at present in greatest favour. The M’Dougall-Herreshoff, working on ores of over 30% of sulphur, requires no fuel; but in furnaces of the reverberatory type fuel must be used, as an excess of air enters through the slotted sides and the hinged doors which open and shut frequently to permit of the passage of the rakes. The consumption of fuel, however, does not exceed 1 of coal to 10 of ore. The quantity of ore which these large furnaces, with a hearth area as great as 2000 ft. and over, will roast varies from 40 to 60 tons a day. Shaft calcining furnaces like the Gerstenhoffer, Hasenclever, and others designed for burning pyrites fines have not found favour in modern copper works.
The Fusion of Ores in Reverberatory and Cupola Furnaces.—After the ore has been partially calcined, it is smelted to extract its earthy matter and to concentrate the copper with part of its iron and sulphur into a matte. In reverberatory furnaces it is smelted by fuel in a fireplace, separate from the ore, and in cupolas the fuel, generally coke, is in direct contact with the ore. When Swansea was the centre of the copper-smelting industry in Europe, many varieties of ores from different mines were smelted in the same furnaces, and the Welsh reverberatory furnaces were used. To-day more than eight-tenths of the copper ores of the world are reduced to impure copper bars or to fine copper at the mines; and where the character of the ore permits, the cupola furnace is found more economical in both fuel and labour than the reverberatory.
The Welsh method finds adherents only in Wales and Chile. In America the usual method is to roast ores or concentrates so that the matte yielded by either the reverberatory or cupola furnace will run from 45 to 50% in copper, and then to transfer to the Bessemer converter, which blows it up to 99%. In Butte, Montana, reverberatories have in the past been preferred to cupola furnaces, as the charge has consisted mainly of fine roasted concentrates; but the cupola is gaining ground there. At the Boston and Great Falls (Montana) works tilting reverberatories, modelled after open hearth steel furnaces, were first erected; but they were found to possess objectionable features. Now both these and the egg-shaped reverberatories are being abandoned for furnaces as long as 43 ft. 6 in. from bridge to bridge and of a width of 15 ft. 9 in. heated by gas, with regenerative checker work at each end, and fed with ore or concentrates, red-hot from the calciners, through a line of hoppers suspended above the roof. Furnaces of this size smelt 200 tons of charge a day. But even when the old type of reverberatory is preferred, as at the Argo works, at Denver, where rich gold- and silver-bearing copper matte is made, the growth of the furnace in size has been steady. Richard Pearce’s reverberatories in 1878 had an area of hearth of 15 ft. by 9 ft. 8 in., and smelted 12 tons of cold charge daily, with a consumption of 1 ton of coal to 2.4 tons of ore. In 1900 the furnaces were 35 ft. by 16 ft., and smelt 50 tons daily of hot ore, with the consumption of 1 ton of coal to 3.7 tons of ore.
The home of cupola smelting was Germany, where it has never ceased to make steady progress. In Mansfeld brick cupola furnaces are without a rival in size, equipment and performance. They are round stacks, designed on the model of iron blast furnaces, 29 ft. high, fed mechanically, and provided with stoves to heat the blast by the furnace gases. The low percentage of sulphur in the roasted ore is little more than enough to produce a matte of 40 to 45%, and therefore the escaping gases are better fitted than those of most copper cupola furnaces for burning in a stove. But as the slag carries on an average 46% of silica, it is only through the utmost skill that it can be made to run as low on an average as 0.3% in copper oxide. As the matte contains on an average 0.2% of silver, it is still treated by the Ziervogel wet method of extraction, the management dreading the loss which might occur in the Bessemer process of concentration, applied as preliminary to electrolytic separation. Blast furnaces of large size, built of brick, have been constructed for treating the richest and more silicious ores of Rio Tinto, and
