Back to Resourceful July 2022

Mount Isa Mines Copper Smelter rebrick completed

In May and June, Mount Isa Mines successfully completed a multi-million dollar Copper Smelter rebrick, which is required every four years.

The shutdown included replacing 16,530 bricks in the ISASMELT™ furnace, 24,600 in a rotary holding furnace and 16,050 in the anode furnace in the smelter.

The refractory bricks form part of the furnaces which operate at 1,200 degrees Celsius. Over time, the heat erodes the bricks and they need to be replaced.

  • A specialised fitter standing inside the matte turntable, as part of the rebuild.

  • Scaffolders and riggers performing the initial test before lifting up the bricklayers platform.

During the 6-week maintenance shutdown of the operation for the project, the copper smelter’s workforce more than doubled, with an additional 350 contractors joining our 255 employees.

Among them were approximately 50 specialist refractory brick layers, as well as riggers, fitters, boilermakers, electricians, spotters and crane operators.

To carry out the works, a backhoe was raised up to remove the top courses of the furnaces, with a demolition robot suspended on a spider arrangement used to break and remove the existing bricks to make way for the new ones.

  • 24,600 bricks were replaced in the rotary holding furnace.

  • Ducting is replaced between the copper smelter and the Incitec Pivot acid plant. The sulphuric acid plant collects and treats sulphur dioxide to produce sulphuric acid.

The bricks were removed at the base of the furnaces through a chute known as a batwing.

Adrian Herbert, General Manager of Smelting and Refining at Mount Isa Mines says the shutdown required a significant contribution from many areas within our operations to ensure it was completed safely.

“I’d like to thank our employees, contractors, suppliers and support teams involved, not only in the rebrick execution but also the thousands of hours of preparation, onboarding, procurement and planning that goes with a project of this size,” says Adrian.

Brick laying inside the ISASMELT™ Primary Smelting furnace.

“It is a significant project, both in scale for the business and also for the Mount Isa community and region which benefits from the ongoing employment and economic activity generated by the operation.

“The smelter also supports another 240 people who work at Glencore’s copper refinery at Townsville, which converts the copper anode into copper cathode for export,” said Adrian.

The bricks that were removed will be reprocessed at the Mount Isa copper concentrator as they contain a percentage of copper.

  • Rail works being carried out inside the Dome, which is a storage and blending facility to ensure the correct blends of concentrates from across Australia and the world are made to feed the ISASMELT™ Primary Smelting furnace.

  • Bricklaying the anode furnace end wall.

The role of the Mount Isa Mines Copper Smelter  

The Mount Isa Mines Copper Smelter treats over 1 million tonnes per annum of copper concentrate, producing 99.7 per cent pure copper anode.

During smelting, a blended mix of Glencore and third party concentrates is fed into the ISASMELT™ furnace, where it is heated to 1,200 degrees Celsius to melt the concentrate to a liquid, and draw out impurities. 

The molten copper is tapped into two holding furnaces, where the copper is separated into two products – copper matte and copper slag. 

The copper matte is fed through furnaces for further refining, which involves heating it to 1,250 degrees Celsius. The copper slag is separated for reprocessing through the copper concentrator. 

The copper is poured into moulds to set into 350-kilogram copper anode slabs. Once cooled, the anode is loaded onto trains bound for the Townsville Copper Refinery where it is refined into 99.995 per cent pure copper cathode.

Resourceful quick links