Silver mine-to-refinery guide
Slag & Silver Losses
Why smelter slags are assayed and sometimes reprocessed.
Safety boundary: this page is conceptual. It does not provide blasting, underground-work, crusher-clearing, flotation-reagent, cyanide, furnace, molten-metal, pressure-filtration, electrorefining or hazardous-maintenance instructions.
What this topic covers
Why smelter slags are assayed and sometimes reprocessed.
Core mine-to-refinery ideas
Slag is a nonmetallic molten phase designed to collect gangue and selected impurities.
Some valuable metal can be physically entrained or chemically dissolved in slag.
Slag assays help determine whether silver losses are acceptable or warrant further treatment.
Important tradeoffs
Silver often follows lead or copper through smelting before precious-metal refining.
Measurement and accounting
Slag, dust and recycle streams need assay and material accounting because they can retain silver.
Lifecycle perspective
Furnace temperatures, flux recipes, gas handling and molten-metal procedures are excluded.