text: The initial melting of the material to be smelted is usually referred to as the smelting or matte smelting stage. It can be undertaken in a variety of furnaces, including the largely obsolete blast furnaces and reverberatory furnaces, as well as flash furnaces, Isasmelt furnaces, etc. The product of this smelting stage is a mixture of copper, iron and sulfur that is enriched in copper, which is called matte or copper matte. The term matte grade is normally used to refer to the copper content of the matte.
  The purpose of the matte smelting stage is to eliminate as much of the unwanted iron, sulfur and gangue minerals (such as silica, magnesia, alumina and limestone) as possible, while minimizing the loss of copper. This is achieved by reacting iron sulfides with oxygen (in air or oxygen enriched air) to produce iron oxides (mainly as FeO, but with some magnetite (FeO)) and sulfur dioxide.
  Copper sulfide and iron oxide can mix, but when sufficient silica is added, a separate slag layer is formed. Adding silica also reduces the melting point (or, more properly, the liquidus temperature) of the slag, meaning that the smelting process can be operated at a lower temperature.
  The slag forming reaction is:
  :FeO + SiO → FeO.SiO
  Slag is less dense than matte, so it forms a layer that floats on top of the matte.
  Copper can be lost from the matte in three ways: as cuprous oxide (CuO) dissolved in the slag, as sulfide copper dissolved in the slag or as tiny droplets (or prills) of matte suspended in the slag.
  The amount of copper lost as oxide copper increases as the oxygen potential of the slag increases. The oxygen potential generally increases as the copper content of the matte is increased. Thus, the loss of copper as oxide increases as the copper content of the matte increases.
  On the other hand, the solubility of sulfidic copper in slag decreases as the copper content of the matte increases beyond about 40%. Nagamori calculated that more than half the copper dissolved in slags from mattes containing less than 50% copper is sulfidic copper. Above this figure, oxidic copper begins to dominate.
  The loss of copper as prills suspended in the slag depends on the size of the prills, the viscosity of the slag and the settling time available. Rosenqvist suggested that about half the copper losses to slag were due to suspended prills.
  The mass of slag generated in the smelting stage depends on the iron content of the material fed into the smelting furnace and the target matte grade. The greater the iron content of the feed, the more iron that will need to be rejected to the slag for a given matte grade. Similarly, increasing the target matte grade requires the rejection of more iron and an increase in the slag volume.
  Thus, the two factors that most affect the loss of copper to slag in the smelting stage are:
  * matte grade
  * mass of slag.
  This means that there is a practical limit on how high the matte grade can be if the loss of copper to slag is to be minimized. Therefore, further stages of processing (converting and fire refining) are required.
  The following subsections briefly describe some of the processes used in matte smelting.