1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to an optimized method for performing an electrolysis process for producing aluminium in accordance with the Hall-Héroult process with prebaked anodes, and anodes therefore.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a process as described above, there will be evolved gas at the wear-surface (primary the underside or bottom side) of anodes due to the reduction of alumina. In particular carbon dioxide gas will accumulate at this surface, causing variations and instabilities in the electrical contact from the anode to the electrolyte. This physical phenomena have several drawbacks, such as:
The extra IR-drop (Interpolar Resistance drop) because of the gas bubbles in the electrolyte has been measured to be 0.15-0.35 volt in alumina reduction cells (1992, The 11th International Course on Process Metallurgy of Aluminium page 6-11).
There have been several proposals for minimizing the above mentioned problem, such as introducing anodes with a sloped or tilted bottom, forming slots or tracks in the wear surface of the anodes to drain the gas away from this area.
Slots in prebaked anodes are normally produced in a vibrator compactor when the anode mass is in a green state, or in a dry milling process that is performed on the calcinated anodes. The dry milling process is normally performed by the use of a circular saw. In accordance with commonly available production methods of today, slots can be produced with a width that is approximately 13-15 mm.
There are some minuses by having slots in the anode surface, and it will be mentioned here:
All these drawbacks can be reduced by making the slots more narrow. Thus, the slots should not be wider than necessary to effectively drain the anode gases from the working surface
A study carried out and reported in “R. Shekar, J. W. Evans. Physical modelling studies of electrolyte flow due to gas evolution and some aspects of bubble behaviour in advanced Hall cells, Part III. Predicting the performance of advanced Hall cells, Met. and Mat. Trans.,Vol. 27 B. February 1996, pp. 19-27”, indicates that tracks with a width less than 1 cm did not drain the gas properly.
Despite the teaching above, the applicant now has performed initial studies in an electrolysis cell applying anodes with very thin slots, which has proven to give sufficient gas drainage.
The anodes involved in the studies were calcinated and processed by implementing a processing technique known from processing/cutting other types of materials.
By making the slots in the calcinated anode thinner than that of the prior art, the above mentioned disadvantages will be less.
Since the thin slots take away only a small fraction of the anode mass, potentially a high number of slots can be used.
The drop in bath voltage when using slots allows amperage increase in the alumina reduction cell, increasing the production of aluminium and decreasing the specific energy consumption. This advantage is improved when using narrow slots, because of the earlier mentioned fact that only a small fraction of the anode mass is removed even when using several narrow slots.
These and further advantages can be achieved with the invention as defined in the accompanying set of claims.
In the following, the invention shall be described further with reference to examples and figures where:
As disclosed in
In
In the full-scale studies carried out, it has been observed that the depth of the slots will increase slightly due to the erosion in the electrolysis process. This effect is caused by the fact that the gas drained into the slots from the bottom of the anode will consume carbon material in the bottom of the slot due to the Boudoard reaction (CO2+C=2CO). A consumption of 2-3 centimeters of carbon material in the bottom of the slots has been observed in an anode that had been utilized in the cell for 17 days, i.e. 60% worn anode.
This self-propelled slot extending effect must be taken into account when determining the processing depth of the slots.
By the new method of processing the slots, there will be produced fine-grained dust that can easily be returned back to the mass factory. In fact, the dust produced will replace a certain type of dry dust that is needed in the mass factory anyway. Thus, instead of having a problem with excessive material to be recycled, the new processing method produces a useful material as a byproduct of the method.
The drop in voltage noise in the cell is at least the same as obtained earlier in cells having traditional slots of width of 12-15 millimeters, indicating that the 3 mm slot width is sufficient to remove the carbon dioxide gas from the working surface of the anode.
A further comparison between anodes with 3 millimeters wide slots and anodes with 15 millimeters wide slots shows that even with the same number of slots the advantage is considerable: For an anode of 100 cm width and provided with two 15 millimeters wide slots, the anode working surface was reduced by 3%. In an anode constructed in accordance with the present invention, two slots of 3 millimeters width reduce the working surface by only 0.6%.
It is assumed that the invention will work with even more narrow slots, for instance 2 millimeters, but it has not been practically possible to verify that as of yet.
Number | Date | Country | Kind |
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20053072 | Jun 2005 | NO | national |
Filing Document | Filing Date | Country | Kind | 371c Date |
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PCT/NO2006/000221 | 6/9/2006 | WO | 00 | 3/4/2008 |
Publishing Document | Publishing Date | Country | Kind |
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WO2006/137739 | 12/28/2006 | WO | A |
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Number | Date | Country | |
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20090114548 A1 | May 2009 | US |