Modern wet smelting technology has gradually become popular. The use of electrolytic equipment wet smelting technology can greatly reduce the smelting cost. It is usually used to treat low-grade copper oxide, and the resulting refined copper is called electrolytic copper. Modern wet smelting mainly adopts sulfuric acid roasting-leaching-extraction-electrowinning-leaching and other processes, which are suitable for heap leaching, tank leaching or in-situ leaching of medium- and low-grade, complex ores, copper oxide ores, and copper-containing waste ores.

The principle of wet smelting and beneficiation technology is: Fe+CuSO4=FeSO4+Cu. It is not necessary to use iron, as long as the metal activity is stronger than copper. It is not necessary to use copper sulfate, but soluble copper salts. Wet copper smelting is the electrolysis of saturated copper sulfate solution. In the electrolytic cell, iron is used as the anode, copper is used as the cathode, and saturated copper sulfate solution is used as the electrolyte. After power is turned on, the iron on the anode loses electrons to form ferrous ions, and the copper ions gain electrons on the cathode and become copper atoms. In this way, a relatively pure copper element can be obtained.

The impact of hydrometallurgy on the copper industry:

1) In the United States, the grade of copper ore produced by heap leaching is even 0.04%. The surface ores, waste rocks and tailings that were originally thought to be unprocessable can be reused, which greatly broadens the scope of development and utilization of copper resources;

2) The hydrometallurgy process is simple and consumes less energy, thus reducing production costs.

3) There is no impact on the environment. The hydrometallurgy process does not produce sulfur dioxide flue gas. When the sulfide ore is pressurized for leaching, sulfur can be produced in the form of S, and no excess sulfuric acid will be produced. In particular, the underground dissolution method does not require mining, does not cause damage to plants and the ecological environment, and fundamentally improves the working environment of miners;

4) The cathode copper produced is of excellent quality. At the same time, by using PbCa-Sn alloy anodes and adding Co2+, the corrosion of lead anodes is effectively avoided, thereby ensuring the quality of cathode products

The electrolytic equipment hydrometallurgy of copper ore is fast and high in purity.