Impurity removal from brass alloy by slag refining treatment
Yaqiong Li, Lifeng Zhang, Xinyu Cai, Ying Zhang, Ligang Liu, Zhen Zhao
Abstract
Impurity removal from Cu-Zn (brass) alloy is an important issue for copper feedstock production. This study investigated brass alloy purification through the slag refining process using two kinds of agents, namely Cu 2 O and ZnO. The results showed that using ZnO as the slag to purify brass alloy for 1 h can remove impurities, such as Al, Pb, Fe, Ca, and Si, among which the removal efficiencies of Si reached to 60%. After the ZnO slag refining, the Zn loss ratio was only approximately 2%; thus, the brass alloy composition remained stable. The slag refining process using ZnO-contained slag did not only realize brass purification, but also maintained the brass composition stability.