On Feb. 14, a grand ceremony led by China Nerin was held to mark the first feed of the 400kt/a high-purity copper cathode green production project of Daye Hongsheng Copper Smelter. General manager Wu Runhua of China Nerin was invited to attend the ceremony.

The copper cathode production project attracts a total investment of CNY 8.7 billion. It is a key project of China Nonferrous Metal Mining (Group) Co., Ltd. which is observing the guidance of President Xi on revitalizing the development in Hubei province after the Covid-19 pandemic. It is also a demonstration project of cooperation between the central state-owned company and the local government. The copper cathode production project adopts the world's advanced "flash smelting + flash converting" process and is the fourth modern large-scale "double flash" copper smelter designed and built by China Nerin, following Shandong Yanggu Smelter, TNMG Jinguan Smelter, and Southeast Copper Smelter. Up to the present, China Nerin also applies the "double flash" technology in the Amman Project in Indonesia. China Nerin is the only company in China that builds a large-scale "double flash" copper smelter abroad.

Since the project started on May 28, 2020, China Nerin has given full play to its leading edge in copper smelting technology by proposing a few optimized schemes for the project. With much Chinese technology and equipment, China Nerin significantly reduces the project CAPEX and OPEX. What’s more, China Nerin applied the Chinese low-temperature heat recovery technology for the first time in the "double flash" process, saving nearly 70 thousand tons of standard coal per year. The energy saving and emission reduction benefits are significant. The project also adopts China Nerin’s proprietary non-equilibrium high-concentration SO2 conversion sulphuric acid production technology, which has been widely used by more than ten large-scale copper smelters at home and abroad that are making acid with smelting gas.

In addition to the main process, China Nerin leads the industry to implement a centralized control mode with integrated control and provides a "Nerin solution" for Hongsheng Copper Smelter to build an intelligent factory from six aspects: automation, digitalization, networking, visualization, modeling, and integration, completing a series of systems including the automation of the whole smelter, the smart operation of the anode furnaces, the integrated communication of the intelligent plant, the data acquisition, the centralized control room, and the control integration.

The anode furnaces and electrolysis machines, which are the key equipment of the project, are also supplied by China Nerin. Take the anode furnace for example, the anode furnace has a tonnage of 680 tons, which is the world's largest anode furnace.

The official operation of the project marks many first records in the industry, which is another benchmark project of China Nerin in the field of copper smelting, such as taking the shortest time to work out the process, being the greenest production, and having the fastest capacity increase, best product quality, and highest labor productivity in the industry.