After a short summary of the historical milestones of the submerged arc furnace of the last 100 years, the paper will highlight different applications and their specific smelting furnace require-ments in the non-ferrous metallurgy. Additionally aspects of rectangular furnace design in compari-son to circular furnace design will be emphasized as well as new tools for process calculation and simulation. Finally, a new invention will be highlighted to improve slag cleaning technology - the so called "slag washing machine*" (*: resp. secondary DC-based intensive slag cleaning unit). It shows great potentials especially for the copper and PGM related industry. Currently tests are being curried out in a demonstration plant for the deep slag cleaning to extremely low copper contents in the slag at Anglo American's Chagres smefter in Chile.
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