Improvement of smelting energy efficiency through anode production improvement

本项目旨在优化阳极制造技术，解决阳极制造过程中能耗和冶炼单元性能对阳极质量影响的挑战。目前阳极技术面临的挑战是在处理原料频繁变化和限制阳极烘烤所用燃料量的同时，生产出始终如一的高质量阳极。低质量阳极遇到的问题是阳极解体和完全失效，这不仅会导致阳极生产所需能量的损失，而且还会导致电流和磁场的扰动，从而增加额外的功耗。仅在青海，每年就多消耗了21.6万吨碳。在现代冶炼计划中，显著减少电解液中的碳消耗是不可能的，而惰性阳极的实施前景也不明确。及时改善阳极质量和生产工艺，很可能是合理降低过量碳耗的唯一途径。

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.