The World's Largest Tin Smelting Project is Completed and Put into Operation in Mengzi, Yunnan

On November 26,2020, the tin smelting relocation and transformation project of Yunnan Tin Group, the world's largest tin smelting project, was completed and put into operation in Mengzi Economic and Technological Development Zone.

With an investment of more than RMB 3 billion, the project will have an annual output of 70,000 tons of refined tin, accounting for more than 20% of global production at full capacity. As the first moving non-ferrous mining and metallurgy project in the province, it plays a positive role in improving the ecological environment and living environment of the old city, which is known as the City of Tin.

The project has created many new records such as maximum capacity, first-class process facilities, first-class smelting technology level, first-class green and environmental protection, safety and energy conservation, first-class degree of intelligent automation and first-class information management level. It represents the world's first-class technology and equipment level of tin smelting, and will effectively promote the high-end, intelligent and green process of tin smelting.

More than 90 patents have been applied for during the construction of the project. 90% of the production equipment used is localized, including nearly 40% of the local production equipment in Yunnan. “Refined tin is produced purely with self-developed techniques in Yunnan.” Mr. Song Xingcheng, the deputy general manager of Yunnan Tin Group, introduced that the vacuum refining furnace, the core equipment for tin refining in the project, was developed by Kunming University of Science and Technology, and the other core equipment, the fully automatic electro-thermal mechanical crystallizer was jointly developed by Kunming University of Science and Technology and Yunnan Tin Group. The project is also a green smelting project. It is the only tin smelting project in the world that uses oxygen-enriched furnace technology for fuming volatilization and tin concentrate pretreatment, and also the world's first low-concentration sulfur dioxide resource utilization project and the first soot denitrification and tin smelting project. Denitrification is to remove all nitrogen oxides from the smelting exhaust. The sulfur dioxide content in the tin smelting exhaust of Yunnan Tin Group has been lower than 100 mg/m3 (the national standard is 400 mg/m3). The project will produce 33,000 tons of industrial sulfuric acid every year by utilizing the resource recycling technology of low-concentration sulfur dioxide exhaust, which will turn harm into treasure and increase production benefits while realizing green production. In addition, by using the cogeneration technique, the project may turn the waste heat generated from tin smelting process into more than 58,000,000 KWH of electricity every year, which meets one third of the production electricity.