Beside the production of primary metal, the copper industry increasingly sets its focus on the sec-ondary production and therefore recycling is gaining importance. Since many different by-products such as slag, dust, sludge and dross accumulate beside the main metal, a certain copper loss in the production can always be observed. Adequate recycling concepts here offer the oppor-tunity to retrieve the Cu on the one hand and to recover other valuable metals which often include zinc, lead and precious metals on the other. Depending on the copper content of the various resi-dues, different methods suit for the recycling process. While relatively pure scrap and most alloys can be processed directly, materials with a lower metal content additionally have to be refined. In the case of oxidic and impure scrap, an entirely different route has to be chosen for which reason the metallurgical treatment is more profound.
In a first part, this paper lists the most important residues that accrue in the copper industry which include high- and medium grade scrap on the one hand and slags, sludge and dust on the other. The different purity grades are investigated and the materials classified. Subsequently, the differ-ent existing recycling methods describe the various possibilities of efficient copper recovery. A structured approach for the various residues is presented, while a certain focus is also set on the various possible furnaces used for these process steps. The outlook then gives on overview of oth-er possible recycling methods for residues with growing chemical complexity and even lower metal grades which are increasingly gaining importance.