Dubal Cell Voltage Drop Initiatives Towards Low Energy High Amperage Cells

Abstract

In recent years, DUBAL has focused its energy and resources towards reducing energy consumption of aluminum electrolysis cells. The main ambition, though, was to take the available worldclass DX+ Technology, the highest cell amperage technology currently operating in DUBAL, and build upon it further. For that, several voltage drop initiatives were initiated and trials have been conducted on numerous DUBAL cell technologies to demonstrate and prove the newly developed low energy concepts, and more importantly to facilitate the transition from DX+ cell technology to DX+ Ultra cell technology which incorporates all the voltage drop solutions. The initiatives tackled lower energy concepts around four fundamental categories; anode voltage drop, bath voltage drop, cathode voltage drop, and external voltage drop. Indepth mathematical models were used, through commercial software packages to design and predict these concepts. In addition, measurement programs were setup and organized with trials conducted to validate the model predictions. In this paper, the voltage initiatives and trials shall be evaluated in detail, with particular emphasis on the analysis of copper insert cells.