Nearly all commercial tellurium is produced from electrolytic copper refinery slimes, which almost invariably contain selenium, tellurium, copper, silver, gold and traces of platinum group metals. In order to recover and separate the precious metals from the slimes, refineries must effect the separation of copper, tellurium and selenium prior to refining silver and gold to pure products. In this paper, the recovery of tellurium and its processing technology are reviewed. A new hydrometallurgical process for treating Phelps Dodge El Paso Copper Refinery slimes, developed in bench scale experiments, is presented and the process chemistry is discussed.
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