Lead metallurgy - Modern processes and secondary sources

In the 1970s, environmental constraints and rising energy costs led the non-ferrous metals industry to look for alternative processes that were less polluting and less energy-intensive.

Several processes have since been developed. They use :

• direct melting on molten bath;

• hydrometallurgy; these are mainly reserved for by-products from lead metallurgy (copper dross, Harris process residues, speiss and skimmings) and steelmaking (blast furnace and electric arc furnace dusts).

Metallurgy applied to recycling constitutes the most important source of lead, clearly supplanting the usual source represented by galena concentrates. Refining is simpler than for primary resources (see previous dossier: [M 2 264v2] ).