Hydraulics Of The Electrolyte In The Electrolytic Cell. Zinc And Numerical Simulation Studies

The electrolytic deposition process is the highest energy consumption step in the zinc production process. Therefore, reducing the energy consumption of it to improve enterprise efficiency places an important significance in the competitive supermarket.This paper mainly focused on the flow and the flow field in electrolytic cell and measures of improving the flow field. Mechanics experiments and numerical simulation were carried out according to electrolytic tank in a company to further study their internal rules. In terms of mechanics experiment, electrolytic cell water model tester was used with PMMA of similar ratio of 1:5 and water modeling electrolyte based on similarity principles. Conductivity measurements were used to RTD, observation and photography were taken to obtain the flow field information within the cell. In aspect of numerical simulation, a professional commercial software CFD Fluent was used for numerical simulation to the built water model and experimental results were compared to ones of water model so as to prove the accuracy and reliability of simulation. Based on the numerical model, the author also made prediction about electrolyte flow field and temperature field within the cell in the actual industrial production.The results showed that the best flow under the existing conditions of production was 2.33L/min. The best conditions for the original outlet tube were immersion depth 7cm and flow 2.33L/min. There were 6 different kinds of designed outlet tubular from 1 # to 6 # tube, the optimal conditions of different flow and different depth separately were:2.33L/min,7cm; 2.98L/min,7cm; 3.58L/min,9cm; 2.98L/min,7cm; 2.33L/min,9cm; 2.33L/min,3cm. After comprehensive,4 # was proved to be the proper one which could stay 273s longer than the average length in the current production condition.Fluent software was used preliminarily to simulate the flow field and temperature field of zinc electrolytic cell in the study, the results showed that the fluid movement in the cell was consistent with the mechanics experiment and also forecast the flow field and temperature field in industrial electrolytic cell which provided a reasonable theoretical basis for further improving and optimizing the cell structure and increasing the cell capacity.