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Roasting

Roasting is a process that transforms sulfide ores into oxides by heating them in air, causing the sulfur to escape as sulfur dioxide gas. It was commonly used prior to modern smelting techniques to pretreat copper and lead sulfides. Roasting involves firing sulfide concentrates in air to remove unwanted sulfur via a surface oxidation reaction that progresses from the outer layer inward. The mechanism involves oxygen adsorption, an oxidation-reduction reaction between oxygen and sulfur, and sulfur dioxide desorption, leaving oxygen incorporated into the mineral structure. Different types of roasting exist for varying objectives like partial or complete oxidation. Traditional hearth roasters have been replaced by more efficient flash roasters.

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159 views2 pages

Roasting

Roasting is a process that transforms sulfide ores into oxides by heating them in air, causing the sulfur to escape as sulfur dioxide gas. It was commonly used prior to modern smelting techniques to pretreat copper and lead sulfides. Roasting involves firing sulfide concentrates in air to remove unwanted sulfur via a surface oxidation reaction that progresses from the outer layer inward. The mechanism involves oxygen adsorption, an oxidation-reduction reaction between oxygen and sulfur, and sulfur dioxide desorption, leaving oxygen incorporated into the mineral structure. Different types of roasting exist for varying objectives like partial or complete oxidation. Traditional hearth roasters have been replaced by more efficient flash roasters.

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Ron Estolano
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Roasting and its Mechanism

A large number of metals (copper, lead, nickel, zinc, cobalt, mercury, cadmium, antimony,
etc.) occur in nature as sulfide minerals. Reduction of the minerals with carbon and hydrogen,
for instance, result to the reactions
2 + 2 + 2
+ 2 + 2
At quick glance, the chemical reactions seem surprisingly ordinary and appropriately
feasible. A careful dissection though suggests otherwise. The positive free energy changes for
each transformation proves to be uneconomical routes for the extraction of the metal. Further,
the target metals from most sulfide minerals are not extracted into aqueous solutions through
leaching. For instance, in the presence of an oxidant, bornite and covellite are leached slowly in
sulfuric acid while chalcocite, on the other hand, is leached rapidly. As a result, intermediate
conversion of the sulfides to oxides offer an alternative path for the metallurgical reduction. The
preliminary treatment that is commonly used to do this is roasting. As a matter of fact, roasting,
or heating in air without fusion, transforms sulfide ores into oxides, the sulfur escaping as sulfur
dioxide gas.
Roasting played a crucial part in the pretreatment of copper and lead sulfides prior to
their extractive processes, until now. The rise of advanced smelting and converting techniques
eliminated it in their extraction design and flowsheet (e.g. the flash smelting of the International
Nickel Company and Outokumpu, the continuous converting of Outokumpu and Mitsubishi, and
the direct smelting and converting of Mitsubishi). Roasting nonetheless is employed in the
recovery of zinc from sphalerite, nickel from pentlandite and molybdenum from molybdenite.
In roasting, sulfide concentrates are fired in air to remove the unwanted sulfur in the
mineral matrix. The extent of sulfur elimination depends largely in the volume of air and the
affinity of the metal to oxygen and sulfur. As an example, a complete oxidization is achieved in
roasting iron sulfide ores because iron has more affinity for oxygen than sulfur, whereas a partial
roasting is seen in copper sulfides due to the greater affinity of copper to sulfur than oxygen.
Roasting is a typical example of a surface reaction. The external sulfide layer, as a matter
of fact, transforms into oxides and continues to do so until the core of the particle has been
converted. The porous oxide layer then serves as a passageway for the incoming oxygen and the
departing sulfur dioxide. A step-by-step mechanism of the roasting process is depicted below. In
addition, it is an exothermic reaction; it remains self-sustaining throughout the process such that
minimal heat is supplied into the system.
a. adsorption of oxygen at the surface of the sulfide mineral particles
b. oxidation-reduction reaction, i.e., the release of electrons by oxygen as it is incorporated
into the mineral structure and the capture of electrons by sulfur as it is released
c. chemical reaction between sulfur and adsorbed oxygen
d. desorption of sulfur dioxide molecule
e. emission of the molecule leaving a vacant site in the mineral lattice
Types of Roasting and Roasters
Versions of roasting offer flexibility and diversity in the pyrometallurgical smelting designs
with each presenting varying objective. Oxidizing roast has either a partial or complete oxide
product; sulfation roast results to a mixed oxide-sulfate compound. If the aim is to recover a
metal directly by the reaction of oxide formed in situ and the unroasted sulfide, roast-reduction
is selected. Chloridizing roast, on the other side, converts the metal sulfides into water soluble
chlorides. Meanwhile, to remove the unwanted metals or to procure the sought element as
volatilized oxides, volatilizing roast is applied.
Until very recently, hearth roasters, characterized by several horizontal circular refractory
hearths stacked one above another in an alloy shell with the feed charged at the top and the
roast discharged at the bottom, dominated the commercial roasting operations in industries. The
development of highly sophisticated flash roasters, however, outranked the former in size and
efficiency and thus replacing the traditional roasting equipment. In flash roasting, the preheated
concentrates are injected through a burner which is more than perfect for the exothermal nature
of the process.
References
Shamsuddin M. (2016). Roasting of Sulfide Minerals. In Physical Chemistry of Metallurgical
Processes (pp. 39 - 69). John Wiley & Sons Inc.

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