Abstract:Low-purity lead bullion containing about 15% by weight antimony is a byproduct obtained in treating jamesonite ore in China. Up to now, the electrolytic refining is the only process for treating the low-purity lead bullion to product pure lead. However, the low-purity lead bullion contains only 80–85% by weight lead, leading to a lot of serious drawbacks such as high energy consumption, the poor efficiency of electrolytic refining, diffculty of treating high-antimony anode slimes in the subsequent process and so on. The previous selective removal of antimony may contribute to improve the current situation. Therefore, dynamic process based on the oxygen-controlling method under vacuum condition, a new method to remove antimony from low-purity lead bullion, was developed in this work. The experimental results revealed that the antimony content from low-purity lead bullion decreased from14.37% to 0.38%. Namely, 97.87% by weight of antimony can be removed and the PbO content in the distillate is below 1% under following experimental conditions: melt temperature of 933K, vacuum treatment time of 210 min, and air flow rate of 3L/min, corresponding to the residual gas pressure of 13KPa.