Recovery of Precious Metals and Production of Selenium and Tellurium at Montreal East (52374f8d-ba7b-4013-bd33-7aca4e60fbd1)

Two papers have been written previously concerning operations at the Montreal East plant of Canadian Copper Refiners Limited. The first one,1 written in 1932, described silver-refinery operations at the time for producing silver and gold bullion from tankhouse anode slimes; the second,2 published in 1933, consisted of a description of the entire plant. Since publication of these papers the refinery has become the world's larg-est producer of refined selenium. The first selenium was produced in August 1934. Tellurium production on a. commercial scale followed in October 1935. This paper will deal with selenium and tellurium produc-tion and also with present operations in the silver refinery. Blister cakes from Hudson' Bay Mining and Smelting Co., Flin Flon, Manitoba, and commercial anodes from Noranda Mines Limited, Noranda, Quebec, are refined at Montreal East. Both these bullions have unusually high gold, selenium and tellurium content. The average assay of raw slimes produced from domestic and Noranda anodes is about 40 per cent Cu, 3600 oz. per ton Ag, 800 oz. per ton Au, 22 per cent Se and 3.7 per cent Te.