Talk:ISASMELT

Issues indicating conflict of interest (CoI)

According to this paper, someone with the same name as the primary contributor works at the company that owns this process and has published papers about its use.

Issues indicating bias

• A top-level "Advantages" section with no "Disadvantages".
  • Potential disadvantages (High SO₂ production is an environmental concern) listed as advantages "easier to run acid plants".
• Potential disadvantages not listed
  • Must have high-pressure high-oxygen-content gas stream as an input
  • Must have a continually operating acid plant as a toxic gas outflow scrubber
• Virtually no mention of or comparison to alternative systems.
• Unusual in-CAPTION(!) credits to XStrata for images
• No categorization of object ("A variation of a bessemer furnace...") implying its a category of its own

Issues indicating non-encyclopedic

• No actual cross sectional/functional diagrams
• Very little quantitative data ("more efficient than..." by how much? Using what measurements?)

How to proceed?

I'm a noob, given the conflict of interest and other stuff, should we just flag this page for deletion? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.109.219.35 (talk) 08:33, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

Response

Employer and background

Just to be clear: I used my real name in writing this article about the Isasmelt process. Further, I was involved in the development of the process for about 10 years, hence the depth of my knowledge of the process. During that time, I worked for Mount Isa Mines Ltd. I left Mount Isa Mines Ltd over 11 years ago and have no pecuniary interest in the process.

I wrote this article as a record of the history of the development of the Isasmelt process, which is one of the two most popular processes for new copper smelters. I wanted to share my knowledge of the subject with other people. The article brings together information from 60 reference journal and conference papers, and metallurgical text books. It is extensively referenced, and 6 of the 60 references have my name on it. I used these references because I was trying to make sure that the information used in the article was in the public domain, and these articles were normally the only source of the information I wanted to use.

The process was developed over a period of about 20 years before the first commercial construction occurred and involved a lot of people and organisations, including the Australian federal government's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, Aberfoyle Ltd, the Electrolytic Refining and Smelting Company, CRA, and others.

I made no attempt to hide my identity through a misleading user name or just using an IP address. Complaining that I do not have a web page as one of the justifications for removing the article does not seem a particularly strong reason, given that the preceding objections to the article come from an IP address with no name attached.

The article clearly outlines some of the problems associated with the development of the process (e.g. short lance and refractory lives, problems with the waste heat boiler used on the Mount Isa furnace). It is a neutral discussion of the development history.

I have a background in smelting and mineral processing and have been slowly adding to articles in the area. Some of the articles have exhibited significant errors and misconceptions.

Issues indicating bias

I submitted the article through the review process and it was accepted. If the reviewer had had a problem with it at the time, it could have been addressed.

The high SO₂ strength of the waste gas stream is an advantage and was one of the drivers behind its development. The lower the SO₂ concentration in a smelter offgas, the more money that has to be spent on the plants used to capture that SO₂. This is the reason that the reverberatory furnace and sinter plant–blast furnace combinations that used to be the primary technologies in copper smelting have largely been abandoned (see Roasting for a text book reference to this fact). The Isasmelt process was developed as a way of increasing the SO₂ concentration in the offgas to make it cheaper to reduce smelter emissions.

The author of the comments does not seem to have a smelting background or an understanding of the processes used. Oxygen enrichment of the air used in smelting furnaces has become common practice because it reduces the total energy consumption of the smelter. This is an advantage not a disadvantage. Having said that, the Isasmelt furnace does not need any oxygen enrichment. However, operating without oxygen enrichment increase the operating cost of the process, as it does for other modern smelting processes.

Again, having a continually operating acid plant is standard practice for modern smelters, so this requirement is hardly a disadvantage compared with other smelting processes.

Older smelters in some jurisdictions operate without acid plants, and the Isasmelt process can do the same, as can any other smelting process.

The article is about the Isasmelt processes and not others. There are links to articles about other processes where they exist (for example the Inco flash furnace and the Outokumpu flash furnace), although on rereading the article, I note that I did neglect to link to the reverberatory furnace article. In part, I suspect this was because that article is not particularly useful (see Copper extraction techniques#Reverberatory furnace smelting for a better explanation—but only better since I started work on it). The edits that I have (slowly) been making to the Copper extraction techniques page talk about various other smelting options, and my intention was to further develop the standalone articles about those processes. I have just been busy with my real job of late, and have not had much time to complete the task.

In addition, there was a table at the bottom of the article that had links to articles about other smelting processes that was recently deleted. Now that I have noticed its absence, I have replaced it.

I thought the whole idea of hyperlinked text was that you did not have to duplicate articles about every different type of process when discussing each. I assumed when I wrote this article that people interested in other processes would follow the links to them. The flash smelting article does not include references to other smelting processes.

I wrote to Xstrata asking for photographs and drawings of the process when I was preparing the article. The people there were kind enough to provide me with photographs and a drawing they were prepared to put into Wikipedia Commons. I thought it worth acknowledging the source of the photographs. If this is a major problem, I am happy for the acknowledgments to be deleted, although other articles (such as National Space Society) also acknowledge sources of images.

I have no idea what is meant by "No categorization of object". It is not a variation of a Bessemer furnace, and I did not claim that it was. Someone did kindly add categories, such as Industrial furnaces, at the bottom of the article.

Issues indicating non-encyclopedic

There is a cut-away drawing of the furnace in the article. I am not sure why it is said that there are no cross-sectional drawings. The standard of illustration of the article is better than some others I have read.

The comment about "very little quantitative data" is also not fair. There are numbers throughout the article. For example, the article stated that the use of the Isasmelt furnace at Mount Isa reduced the energy consumption in smelting by over 80% in one section and in another gave figures of a reduction from 25.6 GJ/t to 4.1 GJ/t. Figures are given for the capital costs of projects, and the operators of a new Isasmelt plant in China wrote that it saved US31.4 million during the first 38 months of operation in reduced energy costs alone.

All the numbers used came from papers published at international conferences, in journal articles or text books. Links are provided to the original sources, where these were available online. The content of the article is verifiable by anyone who has access to a library containing the conference volumes, journals and books cited.

If the use of TM in the article is a problem, I am happy to delete it, although the process is trademarked. The one area that the TM cannot be removed from is where it appears on the cut-away drawing. That was how the diagram was given to me, and I can't edit it.

How to proceed

I believe the Isasmelt article is an accurate record of the process's development history that is of interest to people involved in the mining and smelting industry, and a useful background for people not associated with the industry. It should be read as part of a developing suite of articles about the mining industry and processes used in it that I started working on last year. As mentioned earlier, the area that I was last working on was the article on Copper extraction techniques, and my intention is to expand it when I have the time (note that the reason the section on flash smelting there appears incomplete is that this is where I got up to last time I worked on it).

As also mentioned earlier, I am happy to remove the TMs and the acknowledgements on the photos if they are considered a major problem (this could have been done at the time the article was originally approved, if it was).

I do not believe the page should be deleted. ChrisFountain (talk) 13:31, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

Full history

The article is valuable, but I do believe it should mention how similar technology (Ausmelt) spun out from the same research line. Actually an article TSL technology would be valuable unless you consider Ausmelt and Isasmelt TSL's to be very distinct processes. SA mtm (talk) 11:49, 7 April 2015 (UTC)