Improvement of smelting energy efficiency through anode production improvement

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This project is planned to optimize the anode manufacturing technology addressing the challenges related to the effect of anode quality of both the energy consumption in anode manufacturing process and the performance of smelting cells. The challenge of the present anode technology is to produce consistently high quality anodes while dealing with frequent changes in the incoming raw materials and limiting the amount of fuel used for anode baking. The issues encountered with low quality anodes are anode disintegration and outright failure resulting not only in the loss of the energy required for the anode production, but also in the perturbation of the current flow and magnetic field increasing the extra power consumption. 216,000 tons of carbon is annually consumed in excess, in Québec alone. In the modern smelting plans a significant reduction of carbon consumption in electrolytic bath is not possible while the perspective for implementation of inert anodes is not clear either. In time, the improvement of anode quality and production process is most likely the only way to reasonably reduce the excess carbon consumption.