THE NUMERICAL SIMULATION OF FLOW IN ALUMINUM REDUCTION CELLS

The electromagnetic force causes a circulation of both cryolite and the metal in the aluminum reduction cells. This motion has the effect of reducing the current efficiency of the cell, and increases the distance between the an- ode and the cathode. Using the time-averaged Navier-Stokes equations and the K-e model of turbulence this paper numerically calculated the distributions of velocities, pressure, turbulent kinetic energy in the cells and deforma- tion of the interface of cryolite and metal. These results may be used to control the process of production and to improve the design of the cells.

COUPLED SIMULATION OF 3D ELECTRO-MAGNETO-FLOW FIELD IN HALL-HEROULT CELLS USING FINITE ELEMENT METHOD

Two full 3D steady mathematical models are developed by finite element method （FEM） to calcalate coupled physics fields. the electro-magnetic model is built and solved first and so is the fluid motion model with the acquired electromagnetic force as source body forces in Navier-Stokes equations. Effects caused by the ferromagnetic shell, busbar system around, and open boundary problem as well as inside induced current were considered in terms of the magnetic field. Furthermore, a new modeling method is found to set up solid models and then mesh them entirely with so-called structuralized grids, namely hex-mesh. Examples of 75kA prebaked cell with two kinds of busbar arrangements are presented. Results agree with those disclosed in the literature and confirm that the coupled simulation is valid. It is also concluded that the usage of these models facilitates the consistent analysis of the electric field to magnetic field and then flow motion to the greater extent, local distributions of current density and magnetic flux density are very much dependent on the cell structure, the steel shell is a shield to reduce the magnetic field and flow pattern is two dimensional in the main body of the metal pad.

Dynamic self-adaptive ANP algorithm and its application to electric field simulation of aluminum reduction cell

Region partition(RP) is the key technique to the finite element parallel computing(FEPC),and its performance has a decisive influence on the entire process of analysis and computation.The performance evaluation index of RP method for the three-dimensional finite element model(FEM) has been given.By taking the electric field of aluminum reduction cell(ARC) as the research object,the performance of two classical RP methods,which are Al-NASRA and NGUYEN partition(ANP) algorithm and the multi-level partition(MLP) method,has been analyzed and compared.The comparison results indicate a sound performance of ANP algorithm,but to large-scale models,the computing time of ANP algorithm increases notably.This is because the ANP algorithm determines only one node based on the minimum weight and just adds the elements connected to the node into the sub-region during each iteration.To obtain the satisfied speed and the precision,an improved dynamic self-adaptive ANP(DSA-ANP) algorithm has been proposed.With consideration of model scale,complexity and sub-RP stage,the improved algorithm adaptively determines the number of nodes and selects those nodes with small enough weight,and then dynamically adds these connected elements.The proposed algorithm has been applied to the finite element analysis(FEA) of the electric field simulation of ARC.Compared with the traditional ANP algorithm,the computational efficiency of the proposed algorithm has been shortened approximately from 260 s to 13 s.This proves the superiority of the improved algorithm on computing time performance.

Bio-inspired carbon electro-catalysts for the oxygen reduction reaction

We report the synthesis, characterisation and catalytic performance of two nature-inspired biomassderived electro-catalysts for the oxygen reduction reaction in fuel cells. The catalysts were prepared via pyrolysis of a real food waste（lobster shells） or by mimicking the composition of lobster shells using chitin and CaCO3 particles followed by acid washing. The simplified model of artificial lobster was prepared for better reproducibility. The calcium carbonate in both samples acts as a pore agent, creating increased surface area and pore volume, though considerably higher in artificial lobster samples due to the better homogeneity of the components. Various characterisation techniques revealed the presence of a considerable amount of hydroxyapatite left in the real lobster samples after acid washing and a low content of carbon（23%）, nitrogen and sulphur（〈1%）, limiting the surface area to 23 m^2/g, and consequently resulting in rather poor catalytic activity. However, artificial lobster samples, with a surface area of ≈200 m^2/g and a nitrogen doping of 2%, showed a promising onset potential, very similar to a commercially available platinum catalyst, with better methanol tolerance, though with lower stability in long time testing over 10,000 s.

Colloidal Alumina-bonded TiB_2 Coating on Cathode Carbon Blocks in Aluminum Cells

Self-propagating high-temperature synthesis (SHS) with reduction process was used to fabricate TiB2 powder from TiO2-B2O3-Mg system. The colloidal alumina-bonded TiB2 paste was prepared and coated on the cathode carbon blocks. Various properties of the baked paste such as the corrosive resistance, thermal expansion and wettability were tested. Experimental results showed that the colloidal alumina-bonded TiB2 coating could be well wetted by liquid aluminum; and the thermal expansion coefficient of the coated material was 5.8x10(-6) degreesC(-1) at 20-1000 degreesC, which was close to that of the traditional anthracite block cathode (4x10(-6) degreesC(-1)); the electrical resistivity was 8 mu Omega (.)m at 900 degreesC when the content of alumina in the coated material was about 9% in mass fraction. In addition, some other good results such as sodium resistance were also reported.

Multicomponent platinum-free nanoporous Pd-based alloy as an active and methanol-tolerant electrocatalyst for the oxygen reduction reaction

Development of high-performance oxygen reduction reaction （ORR） catalysts is crucial to improve proton exchange membrane fuel cells. Herein, a multicomponent nanoporous PdCuTiA1 （np-PdCuTiA1） electrocatalyst has been synthesized by a facile one-step dealloying strategy. The np-PdCuTiA1 catalyst exhibits a three-dimensional bicontinuous interpenetrating ligament/channel structure with an ultrafine length scale of -3.7 nm. The half-wave potential of np PdCuTiA1 is 0.873 V vs. RHE, more positive than those of PdC （0.756 V vs. RHE） and PtC （0.864 V vs. RHE） catalysts. The np-PdCuTiAl alloy shows a 4-electron reaction pathway with similar Tafel slopes to PtC. Remarkably, the half-wave potential shows a negative shift of only 12 mV for np-PdCuTiA1 in the presence of methanol, and this negative shift is much lower than those of the PdC （50 mV） and PtC （165 mV） catalysts. The enhanced ORR activity of np-PdCuTiA1 has been further rationalized through density functional theory calculations.

Modeling of Three-Phase Flow and Interface Deformation of Metal/Bath in Aluminum Reduction Cell With Cathode Protrusion

Stabilizing the interface wave of the molten aluminum(metal)-electrolyte(bath)is beneficial to shorten the anode-cathode distance(ACD)which is critical to the energy saving.A coupled mathematical model was developed to study the impact of the novel cathode protrusion on the molten fluid motion as well as the metal-bath interface deformation.The molten fluid motion in the aluminum reduction ceils is under the combined effect of the electro-magnetic forces(EMFs)and the gas bubbles generated at the anode.A transient inhomogeneous three-phase model(metal-bath-gas bubble)was established in order to calculate more accurate.The results indicate that the metal-bath interface deformation can be reduced significantly by the novel cathode protrusion which is beneficial to the electric energy saving.Besides,The EMFs decreases as a result of the optimizing of the magnetic field due to the novel cathode convex which is an important driving force for the deformation of the interface.In addition,large vortex in the metal flow field is break up into the small vortex by the cathode protrusion and then dissipated due to the viscous force and the hindering effect of the cathode protrusion.The quantity of the vortex as well as the strength of the vortex reduces significantly in the reduction cell with novel cathode protrusion.