Zinc Refining at Iijima Zinc Refinery

Abstract

In 1972 Akita Zinc Co., Ltd. commenced operations with the annual capacity of 78,000 ton of electrolytic zinc, and it had operated with its annual capacity of 156,000 t-Zn since 1974. The business surroundings for zinc production has been coming severer with some economical reasons. Then we tried to survive with some improvements, and succeeded to reduce the operating cost and to get more profits as follows; 1) expansion of its producing capacity to 200,000 t-Zn annually, 2) saving man-power by introduction of fully-automated machines for cathode handling at cell house operation, 3) improvement of Hematite process by means of recovery of rare-metals and arsenic removal. These measures improved profitability of Akita Zinc. But the market for zinc raw material is changing drastically and we have to treat more secondary materials by environmental reasons.