Study On The Life Of GL 190kA Prebaked Aluminum Reduction Cells

The problem that the life of GL190kA prebaked cells is too short in Shanxi Guanlu Aluminum Co. Ltd. is a severe problem affecting the company's benefits. Based on extensive literature review, previous work and our company's practice on GL190kA prebaked cells , many respects concerning the cell life were discussed in details in this paper .Main research work and conclusions are as follows:(1) Several factors affecting the cell life and measures to prolong the cell life were discussed. The research work concerned the quality of cell installation materials, the quality of cell installation, preheating, starting-up and operating technologies, the technical management in the normal production process and the application of new materials. It was proved that sodium penetration was the main reason causing the cell life to become short. Many methods were worked out and practiced on GL190kA cells.(2) The application tests of the ambient-temperature-cured TiB₂ cathodic coating were carried on GL190kA cells. The results drawn from the measurements, statistics and analysis in one year showed that: (a)the ambient-temperature solidification and the good coating characters of the coating material made it easy to be used in industry practice; (b)compared with the contrast cells, the coating cells had more uniform anode current distribution (average deviation decreased by 35.25%) and more uniform cathode current distribution (average deviation decreased by 47.52%), which could remedy the deficiencies of the coke-preheating technology and decrease the probability of early failures of GL190kA cells. The features of the molecule ratio changing slowly during the cells' starting-up demonstrated that the coating could reduce sodium penetration and, therefore, could prolong the cell life; (c) the facts that the coating could reduce the cathodic voltage drop of the cells by 26.06mV, raise the current efficiency by 2.056% and reduce DC energy consumption by 282.5kWh/t-Al proved that this kind of technology had a good energy-saving effect.