Vol 55 Iss. 3

The replenishment of raw material reserves of non-ferrous metallurgy mainly by ores of complex composition, which are characterized by fine intergrowth of minerals, and at the same time the increasing requirements for the complete use of all valuable components of these ores urgently require the creation of new, more advanced technological flowsheets for their processing.

In mineral beneficiation in a number of cases significant changes in the technological process occur as a result of the mutual influence of the minerals being separated. For example, in the practice of concentration plants processing rich polymetallic sulfide ores (Zolotushinskaya, Belousovskaya, Berezovskaya, etc.), the flotation activity of galena periodically decreases.

A fluidized bed of fine grains (an aerosuspension), as is known, is used to separate a mixture of particles of different sizes and composition in the gravity beneficiation of minerals.

In the early fifties, the exceptional importance for aluminium metallurgy of a peculiar process of introduction of alkali metals (and certain other substances) into the interlayer space of carbon-graphite materials was established for the first time.

Existing industrial methods for obtaining certain rare refractory metals (titanium, zirconium, vanadium, etc.) are based on the reduction of thermally stable chlorides of the corresponding elements, purified from impurities, by magnesium or sodium...

In spite of many years of practical application of the methods of contact reduction and electrodeposition of selenium and tellurium, the bulk of the research has been carried out on compounds of tetravalent selenium and tellurium. In this work, differences in the redox properties of selenium and tellurium are considered, as well as the kinetic features of the behavior of certain of their compounds, which open up the possibility of creating new efficient methods for the extraction and purification of rare chalcogens.

The main directions of technical progress in non-ferrous metallurgy, provided for by the Directives of the 24th Congress of the CPSU on the ninth five-year plan for the development of the national economy of the USSR, are: increasing the extraction of metals from ores, improving the integrated use of raw materials, and the widespread introduction of closed technological flowsheets with full processing of intermediate products.

Due to insufficient development of the technology and design solutions at pilot plants, as well as changes in a number of general conditions, the actual indices of the Tuvakobalt Combine, put into operation in 1970, proved much worse than the design ones...

For a long period of time the level of nickel production has determined the indicators of technical progress in many important branches of technology both in the USSR and abroad. This is the reason for the intensive development of the world nickel industry, observed at the present moment and expected in the near future.

In modern pyrometallurgy of non-ferrous metals, one of the most important places belongs to the converter process, which, along with ore smelting, is the main unit of the pyrometallurgical flowsheet of nickel and copper production. At the USSR's plants, converting is used for the processing of copper, copper-nickel, nickel, polymetallic and cobalt mattes, as well as ferronickel.

The last decades have been marked by the emergence of fundamentally new technological methods designed to intensify various technological processes. These methods include the method of the fluidized bed. The production of non-ferrous metals (pyrometallurgical processing), oil refining, the production of certain building materials, sulfuric acid production, the drying of grain, plastics and paste-like materials, the granulation of salts and certain other processes have developed to one degree or another on the basis of the use of the fluidized bed.

The horizontal converter, which has become widespread in the metallurgy of copper and nickel, belongs to the metallurgical units in which the conditions of blast supply play a decisive role. The existing limit of the converters' air load, which restricts their productivity, can be significantly exceeded. Work in this direction continues at the Furnace Department of the LGI.

Methods for modeling electric fields in the electrolyte were developed by N. P. Gnusin and V. P. Mashovets. Methods for modeling electromagnetic fields were used in the works of O. Beckman, E. A. Meerovich, N. Schmidt, and V. N. Rudakov...

The equations discussed in the paper are applicable to the description of the statistical motion of particles of matter in the processes of metallurgy, mineral processing, chemical transformations, geophysics, etc...

The rapid development of industrial enterprises entails a significant increase in industrial wastes that poison the atmosphere and water bodies. One of the sources of pollution is wastewater from beneficiation plants. Their composition is complex and diverse, and therefore effective analytical control over the content of toxic substances in them has not been fully achieved.