Metal Instabilities and its Effect on Cell Performance during Aluminium Smelting

Abstract

The Hall-Heroult process for the production of aluminium is based on the electrochemical reduction of alumina (Al2O3) dissolved in a cryolite (Na3AlF6) based electrolyte. Instability in cell voltage is referred to as noise. Normal voltage noise is inevitable due to bubble evolution and it has little effect on performance parameters such as, current efficiency and power consumption. Metal rolling noise (wavy noise) is caused by the disturbances in cell magnetic field and it affects the cell current efficiency adversely. Investigating the causes of the cell instability in the aluminium smelting cells can lead to better cell performance. Understanding the variation in cell voltage is critical for cells, because magnitude of voltage determines the energy consumption pattern in the process and hence, any saving on voltage can save energy. Voltage affects the current efficiency of the cell and an optimum cell voltage leads to higher current efficiency without compromising on energy consumption. Magnetic, current distribution, heat loss and voltage at zero current measurements along with online current and voltage signal can help to identify the problems and their combined effects on the performance of the cells. In order to estimate the loss in current efficiency of the aluminum electrolysis cells due to metal instabilities, measurements were performed and data analyzed. The present paper analyses the effect of voltage fluctuations (noise) during metal instability along with cause of instability and its effect on current efficiency of the cell. Measurements carried out to estimate the deviations from the normal cell operations are also discussed.