Smelting
Copper concentrates sourced globally are processed, smelted and treated in PASAR.
Using a conveyor belt, the copper concentrates are transported into the storage house where it is stored. Using the bin-blending system, these are mixed with other concentrates to provide a consistent feed quality. Afterwards, the mixed copper concentrates are dried to remove moisture and is fed into the system.
After that process, the concentrates are moved to the smelting plant. In this place, the concentrates are fed into the flash furnace facilities. Using a flash smelting technology, which has oil burners and water-cooled uptake. During this process, the copper concentrates reacts with oxygen enriched-air producing copper matte, iron oxides and sulphur dioxide which causes it to directly be oxidized and be separated into matte and slag when melted.
It is skimmed off and is moved into the Slag Flotation Plant (SFP). The plant recovers the entrained copper in the slag and when the copper is retrieved, it is then returned to the smelting plant for further processing.
While entrained copper is recovered in the SFP, the matte that sinks in the bottom of the furnace is transferred into the converter furnace. During this process, the matte is further upgraded into blister copper which already contains approximately 98% copper.
After that, PASAR uses an anode furnace to remove oxygen in the blister copper.
Lastly, the refined blister copper are cast into anode plates using the casting wheel. These anodes that already contains 99.5% copper are either for use as commercial anodes or is transferred into the refinery plant for electrolytic refining.