European smelting and environmental considerations

摘要

The impact of Non-ferrous Smelters on their local surroundings is well monitored and guarded by various actors: the owners looking for profitability, the villagers looking for employment, the consumers asking for ever cheaper products and services, the government collecting taxes and all cherishing the environmental impact. Recent challenges facing the industry are various new doomsday projections: that we will be running out of base metals, that the ground we dwell on will be contaminated by the use of products. To become sustainable, recycling is needed and promoted. Smelters, such as Boliden's Ronnskar Smelter have a long history of increasing non-ferrous resources by recycling. Extraction and recycling of metals together with energy recovery can be integrated in modern, profitable and clean smelters. In the presentation the input and stimuli from research done by Keith Brimacombe and his co-workers will be illustrated as well as other efforts to improve the business by process improvements, flow sheet rationalisation, environmental investments, new feed from recycling and improved energy utilisation.