The Flin Flon Copper Smelter

Introduction The copper smelter of the Hudson Bay Mining and Smelting Company, Limited was constructed to handle the concentrates produced by the concentrator, the residues from the zinc plant, concentrates from Sherritt-Gordon Mines, Limited, and other custom material that might be available. Construction work was started in 1929 and the first concentrates were smelted in November, 1930. From that time until June, 1931, the operations were more or less of an experimental or tuning-up nature. In designing the smelter, it was believed the following tonnages would be available for smelting per day: Copper Tons Content H. B. M. & S. Co. concentrates 331 14.0 per cent H. B. M. & S. Co. zinc plant residues 77 2.5 per cent Sherritt-Gordon concentrates 200 20.0+ per cent Consideration was given to wet-smelting the charge, but, in order to give greater flexibility to the operation, it was finally decided to roast the concentrates before smelting. Briefly, the smelter equipment consists of three Nichols-Herreshoff roasters, one reverberatory furnace, two Peirce-Smith converters, a Walker casting wheel, and a four-unit Cottrell plant, two units' for the roaster gases and two for the converter gases. A general plan of the smelter is shown in Figure 1. Prior to the commencement of smelter operations, a stockpile of about 9,000 tons of concentrates had been built up by the concentrator and the old pilot-mill. The zinc plant was in operation, but the equipment for drying the residues at the smelter had not been completed. Sherritt-Gordon did not commence their shipments of concentrates until April, 1931. The only flux available was barren sand from a pit ten miles south of Flin Flon, adjacent to the railway. Several small deposits of metal-bearing siliceous ore had been discovered in the district, but none of these were sufficiently large to be considered as a source of smelter flux. At the beginning of March, 1931, the entire stockpile of concentrates had been consumed, and available tonnage for smelting was limited to the daily production of the concentrator.