Abstract: In vertical distilling zinc process， the silver bearing in the zinc concentrate feed primarily remained in the distilling residue. The recovery of silver by flotation from the vortex furnace fuming slag of the distilling residue was investigated. The main parameters including pulp pH， temperature， dosage of the collector and frother which affected the rougher flotation performance were studied. Under the optimized roughing parameters， multistage open circuit and close circuit flotation tests were conducted. Best results were obtained using onestage roughing， fourstage cleaning， and threestage scavenging and the dosage of the collector and frother was 800g·t-1 and 350g·t-1， respectively. The grade of the final silver concentrate was 6100g·t-1 with the silver recovery of 86.10%.

Key words: zinc vertical distilling residue, fuming slag, flotation, silver