Onahama Smelting & Refining to Treat 40% More Shredder Dust

Fukushima based copper smelter, Onahama Smelting & Refining, in which Mitsubishi Materials, Dowa Metals and Mining and Furukawa Metals & Resources have interests, plans to increase the shredder dust recycling to monthly 14,800 tonnes in fiscal 2008 and fiscal 2009, which is around 40% higher than fiscal 2007 ended March 2008. The firm tries to utilize the 25% higher treatment capacity at 15,000 tonnes after launch of new furnace in December 2007. The firm uses shredder dust, 60% of which is plastic and other burnable materials, as energy to smelt copper ore. The firm also recovers valuable metals from the dust. The new furnace enables to reduce thermal coal consumption and the additional inner capacity of furnace can increase the shredder dust recycling. Japanese shredder dust generation is annual 580,000 tonnes from waste automobile. Copper smelters and steel plants treat 460,000 tonnes of shredder dust. Onahama smelter treated 123,000 tonnes of shredder in fiscal 2007. The firm treated 87,000 tonnes of automobile shredder dust, which is the largest share in Japan. The firm expanded the electrolytic copper output capacity by 25% to 200,000 tonnes per year after adding the new furnace with monthly 60,000 tonnes of copper ore treatment capacity.