The 7th international symposium on Hydrometallurgy was held from June 22-25, 2014, in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada.

The paper Engineering and Production of the 30kt/a Heap Leaching-Solvent Extraction- Electrowinning Plant in D.R.Congo submitted by Wang Wei, the deputy director of metallurgy division of NERIN, was employed by the conference and was recommended to report in the production practice forum on June 24. Jiang Chuanyu, the representative of NERIN South American Office, made a speech in the conference on behalf of Wang Wei.

The International symposium on hydrometallurgy has been held for seven times since 1963. Hydrometallurgy 2014 was organized by CIM (Canadian Institute of Mining) in conjunction with TMS and SME, with participants over 400 people from more than 20 countries. The conference adopted 153 papers including over 80 session papers. The seven topics include extraction (oxides/sulphides), separation (solvent extraction/ion exchange), recovery (electrowinning and electrorefining), environmental/recycling, research/fundamentals, controls and automation, operations/start-up/project updates.

On June 25-26, some representatives went to the Teck Cominco’s zinc/lead smelter located in Trail, British Columbia, Canada, to visit the KIVCET process, high pressure oxygen leaching of zinc concentrate, traditional roasting, leaching and purification process, large plate electrowinning and automatic zinc stripping equipment in the smelter. The Trial smelter, with a history of over 100-year, is the biggest metallurgical enterprise in zinc production in Canada, as well as a typical enterprise achieving comprehensive utilization by pyrometallurgy of leached zinc slag with lead concentrate.