Abstract: The mineralogy of zinc oxide dust was carried out by XRD, LPS, SEM and EDS characterization. The results show that the main components of zinc oxide dust are ZnO and PbS. The average particle size and the specific surface area of zinc oxide dust are 5.39 μm and 1.337 m²·cm^-3, respectively, and there are 50% of the zinc oxide dust whose particle sizes are less than 3.13 μm. The microstructure of zinc oxide dust exhibits spheroid, needle like, cube, floc and so on. The spheroidal particles are the oxidation mixture of lead and zinc in which ZnO is the main phase. The cubic particles are PbS phase, and the floc and needle particles belong to ZnO phase. It is suggested that zinc oxide dust should be pretreated by microwave and other external fields to improve the leaching rate of Ge and other valuable metals. In addition, innocent treatment should be used to the produced waste residues and wastewater.