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Zinc Smelte Essay

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Smelting in Tasmania
Zinifex Zinc Smelter
Zinc is the metal produced at the Zinifex Zinc Smelter, it is an electrolytic plant, the amount of Zinc metal made at Zinifex Zinc Smelter annually is over 250,000 tonnes, and the base ore required for the production of Zinc metal is Zinc Sulfide found in the earth’s crust.
The formula for Zinc Sulfide is ZnS, Zinc Sulfide is required to be concentrated to be smelted, as when the ore is mined it rarely is rich, due to the ore mined only contains 5-15% Zinc, in order to concentrate this ore it needs to undergo being crushed and then grounded up to separate it from the other minerals, Roasted is the initial process at the plant which is oxidising Zinc sulfide concentrates at high temperatures into a impure …show more content…

The amount of zinc metal produced therefore is calculated by N=m/M
N= 2.5x10^11/65.37 = 3824384274 moles of Zinc to get the moles of re required to create 250,000 tons of zinc metal, we times 3824384274 x 1.85 =707511097 moles of Zinc ore which then can calculate as m=nM 707511097 x (65.37+32.06) =6.89x10^11grams / 1x10^6= 689328.056 tons of ore =689,328 tons of Zinc ore required for 250,000 tons of Zinc metal, therefore the waste is calculated by 689,328 – 250,000=439328 tons wasted (439,328 tons) which are copper, lead and iron. This is 689,328/250,000= 2.757 tons of zinc ore per ton of zinc metal, 1000/2757 = 36.3% of zinc ore becomes zinc metal
Pollutants are Sulfur dioxide, Nitrogen oxide, Pm10 particles (Big particles in the air, dust ,matter, etc.) And Carbon monoxide
Zinifex has spent more than 20 million on minimalizing its impact on the environment from their zinc production, they are cleaning up the Derwent, recovering Zinc from ground water and reducing noise and dust, part of the reason there is Zinc in the ground water is due to previous history of leaching into the

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