Status of solid waste disposal in antimony metallurgy

At present, the traditional blast furnace and reflection furnace technology are mainly adopted in antimony pyrometallurgy. A large number of metallurgical solid wastes are produced in the smelting process, such as smelting slag, arsenic-alkali residue and lead removal slag, which are hazardous and difficult to realize resource recovery and make harmless treatment, and have become a bottleneck restricting the development of antimony smelting enterprises. In this paper, the origin of solid wastes in antimony metallurgy was traced, and the current status of solid waste disposal was analyzed. The stock of smelting slag pile was large, with the energy consumption of fuming treatment high, and the separation ineffective. Arsenic alkali residue was mainly treated by wet method, antimony and arsenic were separated by leaching, and arsenic-containing leaching solution was stacked or landfilled after being solidified. Lead and antimony couldn't be thoroughly separated by the pyrometallurgical treatment process of lead removal slag, thus the recovery of phosphate wasn't realized. The wet treatment was long in the technological process but seldom used in industrial application. Therefore, it is urgent to develop new methods for antimony clean metallurgy and solid waste recycling to achieve clean and efficient extraction of antimony, as well as source reduction and resource recovery of metallurgical solid waste.