Numerical Simulation Of Physical Field In Copper Electrolysis Cell

Copper electrorefining technique is an important part in the production of copper smelting, while copper electrolytic cell is the important equipment of copper electrorefining process, and large-scale copper electrolytic cell is the trend of development of the copper electrolytic industry. Copper electrorefining cell occur a complex process which produces a variety of chemical and electrochemical reactions; the process involves a variety of physical transfer with heat transfer, mass transfer and conductivity in which the flow field, electric field, magnetic field, thermal field and pressure field are mutual coupled. These physical fields have varying degrees impact in technical and economic indicators of production, the life of the tank, energy consumption and current efficiency of copper electrolytic cell. So the research on the condition of distribution of each physical field in the copper electrolytic cell has great significance.With the development of science and technology, the numerical simulation technology is introduced to the metallurgical technique gradually. Making use of the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) technology to simulate and analyze the metallurgical process, which can see the very realistic description of the processes and phenomena within the metallurgical equipment, the technique is becoming an important method of studying the metallurgical process. At present, the research on numerical simulation of the copper electrorefining process at home is very few, so this paper try adopts CFD technology to study the distribution of the each physical fields in copper cell which plays a certain guiding role in the structure optimization and equipment production of Copper electrolytic cell.This paper takes the copper electrolytic cell of some factory in our country as the research objects and adopts the ICEM software structure and corresponding geometric model, based on the Fluent software simulation platform, according to the property of electrolytic refining process, choose energy model, turbulence model and MHD model, according to the typical process parameters in current electrolytic refining, study the electrolytic refining process of multi-field interaction coupled numerical simulation based on the simulation results, output vector of the flow field in the cross section of the cell, the flow chart of the flow field, electric field potential cloud images, the temperature field cloud pictures, the pressure field and so on, We can research and analysis of the distribution and rules of the physical field in copper electrolytic cell, the main conclusion is as follows:First, inside the copper electrolytic cell, the electrolyte flow field distribution can be broadly divided into four regions:(1) Area of below the cathode and anode plate:the copper electrolyte flows through this area accounts for about46%of the total circulation flow, the flow speed of this area is small, the velocity in the range of5.4×10-4-6.3×10-4m/s;(2) On both sides of the cathode and anode plate side face to the side wall of the copper electrolyte cell:the copper electrolyte flows through this area accounts for about38%of the total circulation flow, the flow speed of this area is relatively large, the velocity in the range of9×10-4-2×10-3m/s;(3) Area between the cathode and anode plate:in this region, the electrolyte flow from (1) to (2) zone with arced from bottom to top, the copper electrolyte flows through this area accounts for about16%of the total circulation flow, the velocity in the range of2.5×10-5-1.5×10-4m/s, shows that the electrolyte circulation utilization rate is low, to further increase the current density need to improve the structure and the recycling rate;(4) The corner area of the copper electrolyte cell:electrolyte flow field in a swirling flow.Second, the distribution of temperature field:there exist temperature differences of the electrolyte in the copper electrolysis cell where the electrolyte temperature of the cathode and anode is higher than other regions0～5℃, the closer to the plate ends, the temperature is small.Third, the distribution of electric field:the surface of the cathode and anode plate can be considered as equipotential face, the electric field gradient distribution between the cathode and anode plate is uniformity, the electric field gradient change with all the end face of the plate to the cell wall is bigger.Fourth, the pressure within the copper electrolysis cell is gradually reduced from the inlet to the outlet, but little change in the outlet baffle in the inlet pressure at concentrically reduced.