Refining

After the smelting process, the refined copper anodes are placed between permanent cathode plates inside an electrorefining cells. 

During this process, the direct electric current causes the copper elements in the anodes to dissolve, ionize, and migrate through the electrolyte solution and deposit as pure copper into the stainless steel plates. This process continues from 6 to 10 days until the cathode plate thickens into a full-grown cathode with 99.99% copper purity. Thus, when the cathode plate is stripped, it produces two single sheets of pure copper cathode. 

At the end of the process, the anode scrap is removed, washed and recycled to the converter furnace of the smelter.

Then, the electrolyte solution used during this whole process is decopperized through a reverse electrolysis process while the purified electrolyte solution is recycled back into the system.

Other copper is fed back into the converter furnace at the smelting plant while the decopperized slime is processed into Doré metal and selenium powder.