How Can I Separate Arsenic from Enargite or Tennantite Ores?

When you smelt various ores, (heat to change the state of oxidation etc) you often in effect burn the sulfide in air leaving the liberated copper to melt into a flux, the problem is arsenic sublimes into the gasses and must be filtered out in a baghouse which gives you a toxic dust which most be immobilized and stored. Industry can not use the large amount of by-product arsenic, so it piles up and is often placed back in the mine as part of an immobilized and cemented backfill that has to be approved by the ministry of the environment for stable long term storage - some old mines were not = long term problem.

Since this is a classic problem, with lots of historical research, look here, to avoid wheel re-invention. Major mining districts will have libraries of this data, Denver is one. Major mining schools at the university level also have data. You will see many places in the first few pages. Unless you have academic online access to the journal articles you may have to pay a large fee per article - or go there in person to the library to read them

Smelting copper with arsenic

Tennanite

enargite search