Teaching Quantitative Methods

Abstract

In zinc electrowinning process, electrolyte flow in the cell has an important influence on current efficiency. In this article, a 3D mathematical model has been developed and solved by ANSYS FLUENT software to study the flow field and residence time distribution (RTD) of the electrolyte in the zinc electrowinning cell. According to the RTD analytical theory, the influence of different feeding schemes on electrolyte flow pattern has been investigated, and the optimum feeding scheme was obtained. Zinc electrolysis experiments show current efficiency was increased significantly at the optimum feeding scheme.