Study on harmless and resource utilization of spent cathode carbon washing process

Abstract

Spent cathode carbon is the main hazardous waste in the electrolytic aluminum industry, which seriously pollutes the environment. In this paper, the spent cathode carbon is treated by the water washing process to change it from hazardous waste to solid waste, so that the environment is protected and NaF is also utilized. The optimum conditions were determined by experiment: t=50 min, T=80°C, L/S = 20:1. The raw materials and the washed products were characterized by elemental analysis, X-ray fluorescence (XRF), X-ray diffraction (XRD), and scanning electron microscopy (SEM).