Copper Smelting Process - Furnaces Used, By-Products, and Process Used to Smelt Copper

Modern copper smelters use processed copper ore fed into a flash furnace, typically fired by oxygen which produces blister copper, being further processed in a converter furnace. Molten copper is poured from here into rectangular moulds, the resulting ingots subjected to electrolysis producing a metal of 99.9% purity. Copper can be recycled indefinitely without the base metal being compromised and recycling of copper components can be carried out at the same time as the primary smelting by loading the scrap copper into the smelting furnace along with the copper ore. Sulphuric dioxide gas is created in smelting copper process and is converted sulphuric acid which is used in some of the smelting processes or sold as a by-product.