The Ideal Zinc Refinery Flow Sheet
Conference of Metallurgists 2010, Lead and Zinc, Hosted by METSOC, October 4, 2010, Vancouver, Canada.
Abstract
In the development of a new zinc refinery or the expansion of an existing refinery, the designer is faced with the challenge of determining the best possible refinery flow sheet. This begs the question “What is the ideal zinc refinery flow sheet?” The answer of course is “It depends”. There are numerous factors that influence the decision as to which individual unit processes are combined to form the ideal zinc refinery flow sheet – brownfield or greenfield. In this paper we describe these factors and also the process used at Hatch to determine the optimum zinc refinery flow sheet.