Fundamental study on new zinc distillation process utilizing zinc sulfide reaction with metallic copper

Phase relations of copper-zinc-sulfur ternary system have been investigated at temperatures of 1100 and 1200 K by equilibrating synthetic samples in evacuated sealed quartz tubes. Using the activities of copper and zinc in the copper-zinc binary system reported in literatures, the activities of the components in the copper-zinc-sulfur ternary system have been then calculated by applying the Gibbs-Duhem equations to the phase relation of metal-sulfide equilibrium. The reaction path of a new zinc distillation process, in which zinc sulfide is directly reduced to zinc vapor with metallic copper, and sulfur in zinc sulfide is fixed as copper sulfide, has been discussed in terms of the activities of the components in the copper-zinc-sulfur ternary system.