Impacts of anode set on the energy re-distribution of PB aluminum smelting cells

Abstract

Since the introduction of prebaked anodes technology in Hall-Héroult process, anode setting has become one of the routine work practices. As all anodes in different parts of the cell are changed in turn at short regular intervals, the operation is always subject to a different degree of disturbances. This paper presents a dynamic thermal model that can be used to simulate the impact of anode setting on the local thermal balance and hence the overall operating condition by incorporating individual anode current signals as model inputs. This is done by discretizing the bath into multiple subsystems based on the position of each anode. The model can predict the local thermal conditions during the increase of current pick up of a newly replaced anode when based on online measurements of current distribution. A model incorporated with anode current distribution as model inputs can be employed as a foundation for future development of an online fault diagnostic system to help isolating other disturbances, hence improve early detection of impending abnormal conditions.