Towards a methodology to study the interaction between Cu droplets and spinel

Industrial Cu-smelters still suffer from metal rich droplet losses in slags due to insufficient phase separation. One important factor in the mechanical entrainment of metal rich droplets in slags is their attachment to solid spinel particles, which are also present in the slag phase. Consequently, these particles hinder the settling of the metal droplets. In order to improve phase separation it is important to identify the fundamental mechanism governing this attachment. Industrial slags are, however, of an extremely complex nature and, therefore, the entrainment of Cu-alloy droplets is studied in this work in a simplified, synthetic PbO based slag (PbOCaO-SiO2-Cu2O-FeO-ZnO) containing solid spinel particles. This work presents results on the development and optimization of a methodology to characterize the synthetic system and to discover trends in the interaction at the interface between the spinel and Cu-metal phase.