Computational and analytical chemistry: Methodology to study chemical reactions between sodium, calcium, and aluminum fluorides in molten cryolite

Abstract

Reaction constants and composition profiles in molten cryolite have been theoretically investigated. Hartree-Fock and density functional calculations were applied to determine the exact nature (structure and energetic) of complexes existing in molten cryolite. The aim of this work was thus the understanding of chemical processes occurring in the electrowinning of aluminum and was a demonstration of how computational chemistry (based on density functional theory) can help us to determine structures and reaction energies in particularly complex medium such as cryolite. An analytical study, based on mass balance and equilibrium constants has been undertaken. This was performed on molecular liquid entities taking into account the four-, five- and sixfold coordinated aluminum complexes of the AlF3-3NaF melt system. Moreover, the effect of calcium has been studied by substituting two sodium atoms with one calcium atom, thus leading to the CaNaA1F6 system. Two conformers (instead of three for Na) were obtained for this system. They can be described as representing the four- and fivefold coordinated aluminum complexes in molten cryolite. The structurizing effect of calcium was clearly illustrated by the resulting optimized structures, showing that calcium stabilizes the IV and V coordinations of aluminum. By computing reaction constants, we have obtained composition profiles that are presented with those based on experimental data. Comparisons point out that computational chemistry techniques match with experimental results, especially in the case of pure cryolitic melts. For the presence of the fivefold coordinated aluminum complex in cryolite, and the predominance of the fourfold coordinated complex with calcium, it is clear that these computational techniques show us correct trends in predicting the main species in molten media. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.