ABSTRACT
Engineering mineral processing steps that may have the least impact on land, air and water remain a holy grail for the mining and mineral processing industry. With rising demand for cobalt and copper in the energy sector, the mineral processing industry is under pressure for producing these metals for industrial need; consequently, the environmental impact of mineral processing has shifted geographically nearer to the mining and mineral beneficiation areas of the world. In this chapter, an attempt has been made to capture the essential features of lime-based carbothermic reduction of cobalt and copper-based sulphide minerals and silicate slag derived from flash smelting and converting processes. The slag is considered as a waste product from industry, which often accumulates a high percentage of copper and cobalt, ranging between 1 and 2 wt%. The results discussed herein focus on Zambian concentrates as a sub-Saharan case study for mineral processing using limebased reduction and extraction of metallic values.
