Study On Drained Cathode Cell With TiB₂/C Coating

It is unanimously agreed that the further advance in current efficiency in the future , reducing production costs and increasing international competitiveness should rely on good design in electrothermal field, electrohydromagnetic field, advanced computer control and as a result stabilizing metal pad and process performance, adopting new anode materials, new cathode materials and new cell structure. In recent years, though our aluminum industry has made a big progress, we are still far behind developed countries in terms of cell life. As regard to the reason of cell's early failure, it is closely related to lining materials and process operations except for design and cell building. Among them, the very important, also the main factor in cell failure, is Na and bath penetration into cathode blocks. Meanwhile, because most of the metal leakage occurs at cell sides, hence, the properties of side refractory concrete will be very important for lining life. Therefore, new type of refractory materials around cathode blocks is studied. With refractory materials of higher anti-burning and chemical stability, new refractory concrete materials are rammed for filling around cathode blocks. After being tested under different temperatures of its expansion coefficient and anti-corrosion against cryolite melt, it is shown that the newly rammed refractory material is obviously superior to denser ones currently used. Superficially, newly rammed refractory materials have little erosion. It will be helpful to prolong cell life for drained cathode cells by using such kind of refractory materials.Process conditions and operations exert big influences on current field and flow field in aluminum reduction cells. Here, the current and flow fields of 190kA prebaked anode cells are calculated with our own softwares. Meanwhile, the flow field of 190kA cell is measured on site to verify our softwares. Coincidence between simulated and measured results show that it's credible to calculate cell current and flow field with our own...