Smelting is perceived to be a primary cause of water pollution in its vicinity. Smelters are also responsible for emitting high amounts of air pollutants such as sulfur dioxide, hydrogen fluoride, oxides of nitrogen, offensive and noxious smoke fumes, gases, vapors, and other toxins.
What are the harmful effects of smelting?
Exposure to airborne pollutants from metal processing and smelting can lead to various acute and chronic diseases. Initial sudden exposure can lead to an irritation of the eyes, nose and throat. More serious and chronic effects are heart and lung problems, and even premature death.
What air pollutant is a byproduct of lead smelting?
sulfur dioxide
What does a lead smelter do?
Smelting is a key process in lead product production, and involves heating lead ore or recovered lead with chemical reducing agents. Both secondary and primary smelting processes can be responsible for releasing large amounts of lead contamination into the surrounding environment.
How many lead smelting plants are in the US?
Lead produced by secondary smelting accounts for half of the lead produced in the U. S. There are 42 companies operating 50 plants with individual capacities ranging from 907 megagrams (Mg) (1,000 tons) to 109,000 Mg (120,000 tons) per year.
Does the US still produce lead?
While the closure of a Doe Run primary lead smelter in December 2013 means there are no smelters to make lead from ore anywhere in the United States, smelters to recycle lead remain in operation, and their output is substantial enough to satisfy the needs of ammunition manufacturers.
How many secondary lead smelters are there in the US?
Over time the number of secondary lead smelters has dwindled and now there are only twelve remaining in the United States.
Where is lead smelted?
A reducing environment (often provided by carbon monoxide in an air-starved furnace) pulls the final oxygen atoms from the raw metal. Lead is usually smelted in a blast furnace, using the lead sinter produced in the sintering process and coke to provide the heat source.
Are there any lead smelters in the US?
(There are no more primary lead smelters in the United States.) The recycling process works like this: used batteries are broken open, the lead is extracted and then melted in furnaces and purified with chemicals in the refinery. Those blocks go to companies that include battery and ammunition manufacturers.
How hot is a lead refining furnace?
3: Secondary Lead Smelters. The secondary lead smelting industry produces elemental lead through the chemical reduction of lead compounds in a high temperature furnace (1,200° to 1,260°C). Smelting is performed in reverberatory, blast, rotary, or electric furnaces.
What does lead slag look like?
Granulated lead slag is a black granular material having a high specific gravity of 2.65 to 3.79, due to the high content of iron oxide (Buzatu et al., 2014).
How does smelting cause pollution?
The principal sources of pollution caused by smelting are contaminant-laden air emissions and process wastes such as wastewater and slag. The smelting of sulfide ores results in the emission of sulfur dioxide gas, which reacts chemically in the atmosphere to form a sulfuric acid mist.
How does lead smelting affect the environment?
The extraction and smelting of lead can cause a large amount of toxic pollution, and emissions from lead smelting are a big contributor to global lead contamination. Lead smelting can also pollute the environment with large amounts of particulate matter, toxic effluents, and other various solid wastes.
What will smelting does to the air?
Smelting processes release air emissions that are major factors for both air and water pollution. Acid rain may be produced as a result of sulfuric acid mist being formed from these smelting plants that permeates the atmosphere.