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ABSTRACT
For numerous decades, environmental constraints and rising energy costs have led the lead industry to innovate in processes less polluting and less energy intensive. Several processes have been developed. Direct smelting techniques, Bath Smelting Furnace (BSF), provide lower operating and investment costs, reduced energy consumption and above all a greater respect for the environment. Hydrometallurgical processes are mostly reserved for metallurgy of lead by-products. Recycling processes nowadays constitute the most significant source of lead, which has become the most recycled metal. However, the toxicity of lead and its companions in the concentrates is not forgotten.
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Read the articleAUTHORS
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Pierre BLAZY: Honorary Professor - Former Director, École Nationale Supérieure de Géologie (ENSG)
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El-Aïd JDID: Doctor of Science - Research Engineer, Laboratoire Environnement et Minéralurgie (LEM), UMR 7569, Nancy University (ENSG-INPL), CNRS
INTRODUCTION
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:
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Metal manufacturing processes and recycling
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Bibliography
Websites
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Battery Council International
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CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation) – Australia
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Statistical and economic data
World lead reserves and primary resources
According to the United States Geological Survey (USGS), lead reserves were in the region of 78.5 Mt in 2009 (table ), and identified world resources are estimated at over 1.5 billion tonnes.
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