Upgrading plant equipment helps keep CCR competitive

Canada’s biggest secondary producer of gold is one of the largest copper refiners in the world.

Canadian Copper Refiners (CCR), which traces its beginnings back to 1928 when a business decision was made to build an electrolytic copper refinery “somewhere in eastern Canada,” turned out 958,000 oz of the yellow metal last year at its plant in this city’s east end.

The Noranda Inc. (TSE) company also recovered 24 million oz silver, 146,000 oz platinum-palladium sponge, 950,000 lb selenium and, not forgetting its original reason for existence, 312,000 tons of copper cathode.

It has been an interesting 60 years for CCR, which poured its first copper wire bars in 1931 at its then newly-constructed plant and initially operated without a silver refinery, copper sulphate plant and other facilities including copper cake and billet casting. Copper in 1931 was selling for about 6 cents per lb.

Today the CCR plant has an annual operating cost of $80 million, a pound of copper is selling in the $1(US) range, and the company, which functions as a custom refiner, continues to upgrade its facilities and metallurgical processes to better compete in the global market. Most of the plant’s copper cathode is exported to the U.S. Stable workforce

“I think the place is in fairly good condition,” David Goldman, vice- president Noranda Copper and CCR plant superintendent, told The Northern Miner after a tour of the operations. “One of the advantages we have is a very stable workforce, and very experienced.”

The plant currently has a staff of 1,050 people, said Goldman, himself a veteran CCR employee of 23 years.

A ready-made supply of copper anodes to CCR exists in the form of two Noranda smelters located in different parts of Quebec, the Horne operation in the northwest and the Murdochville operation in the province’s Gaspe region. Last year the pair of smelters accounted for about 64% of the material input to the Montreal refinery. Also forwarding material for refining was Hudson Bay Mining and Smelting (TSE). Copper scrap, blister copper, precious metal ingots, foreign anode slimes and other miscellaneous materials made up the balance of the material received.

At its beginning, the CCR plant had a rated capacity of 75,000 tons, but during the Depression years of the 1930s it never reached that output figure. For 1988, planned copper cathode production is forecast at 375,000 tons, or 97% of capacity. (The amount of gold produced as a byproduct this year is expected to top one million oz.) New silver refinery

Under construction at the plant is a new silver refinery operation. The new TBRC (top blown rotary converter) for slimes processing is expected to cut annual operating costs by $2.25 million and release $16 million of metal in process tie-up. (When the anodes undergo electrolysis to make the more pure copper cathodes, impurities such as gold, silver and other elements collect on the bottom of the tanks and are called slimes.)

Housed in a 7-storey building, the new facility will cost about $22 million to complete, including about $10 million worth of environmental control equipment. It will be a 2-man, computer-run operation. Silver has major application in the photography industry, and rigorous specifications are placed on CCR by its customers, among which is the Kodak company.

Other upgrading projects CCR is involved with include modifying the primary selenium process to reduce operating cost and increase sales volumes of pigment grade selenium, and extensively modifying the high purity selenium process and equipment to improve product quality. CCR operates the world’s largest selenium recovery plant.

(Selenium’s major application is in the photocopying industry, and it is also used in the manufacture of glass, steel, electronic components and pigments. Another byproduct recovered by CCR is tellurium, which has major application as an addition to ferrous and non- ferrous alloys to improve their metallurgical properties.) Pilot plant

Working closely with the Noranda Research Centre, CCR officials are hoping to have a pilot plant in operation by the end of this year as part of an upgrading effort on platinum and palladium bullion refining.

In co-operation with the research centre, CCR implemented in 1986 a new gold leach refining process involving concentrated hydrochloric acid and hydrogen peroxide. The process was designed to treat anode slimes but Noranda says it would be equally effective operating on solutions from the dissolution of mine bullion.

Being explored by CCR is the possibility of direct treatment at its plant of high grade precious metal secondaries which are currently being processed at the smelters. Benefits would include elimination of metal losses and metal in process tie-up.

Installing new machinery at the plant’s anode receiving end, which would mechanize the work now done manually, is also on the drawing boards.

With a lot of attention and money during the past few years directed towards improving the plant’s byproduct facilities, Goldman said a shift in emphasis now has company officers looking at upgrading the cell-house facilities where the electrolysis process occurs.

Over the years, he said, the main changes to the anode cells have involved mechanization of the infrastructure around the concrete cells, but not to the electrolysis process itself. One new development planned is replacement of the lead liners with a type of plastic material.

A more efficient system of heating electrolyte (sulphuric acid an d copper sulphate) is also being investigated by CCR, the current heating system accounting for more than 8% of cathode refining costs.