Experimental Investigation of Gas/Slag/Matte/Tridymite Equilibria in the Cu-Fe-O-S-Si-Al-Ca-Mg System in Controlled Gas Atmosphere: Experimental Results at 1473 K (1200 °C), 1573 K (1300 °C) and p(SO2) = 0.25 atm

The effect of temperature, CaO, MgO and Al 2 O 3 on important technological copper smelting parameters, such as the chemically dissolved copper in slag and the composition of the liquid phase in equilibrium with tridymite, are experimentally characterised as a function of copper concentration in matte. Two series of experiments for the gas/slag/matte/tridymite equilibria in the Cu-Fe-O-S-Si system at p (SO 2 ) = 0.25 atm have been carried out. The effect of CaO at 1573 K (1300 °C), and the combined effect of Al 2 O 3 + CaO + MgO at 1473 K (1200 °C) and 1573 K (1300 °C) have been measured in the first and second series of experiments respectively. The experimental methodology involves high temperature equilibration of samples on a substrate made from the primary phase under controlled gas atmosphere (CO/CO 2 /SO 2 /Ar), followed by rapid quenching of the equilibrium condensed phases and direct measurement of the phase compositions using the Electron Probe x-ray Microanalysis. The resulting data are used in the optimization of the thermodynamic database for the copper-containing systems.