Determining the Boundary of Molten Electrolyte and Aluminum in Electrolytic Cells by Detecting Their Vertical Distribution of Potential

Aluminum production is a high energy consumption process so that maintaining fundamental compositions in balance and optimal conditions are essential.The molten electrolyte and melted aluminum are primary materials and their boundary needs to be monitored from time to time.An automatic measurement technic is presented in the paper to substitute for the traditional manual measurement work that is dull,poor efficiency and dangerous for operators.The boundary forming mechanism is analyzed,the vertical profile of electric potential is simulated,an automatic instrument is developed to sense the potential distribution,and a strategy is provided to identify the boundary according to the potential curves.Finally,some practical results are compared with manual measurements,which shows good consistency.

Growth and passivation of aluminum etch tunnels at on-off controlling direct current in 6 wt.% HCI solution

Growth and passivation of tunnels within Al foil by on-off controlling DC etching in 6 wt.% HCI solution has been investigated. It was found that, in a given etchant solution at a special temperature, the longest tunnel length was only a function of the turn-on interval of DC. The potential of Al foil broke at on-off controlling DC by the result from anode polarization curves and potential-time （E-t） responding curves. When DC was switched on, the potential increased abruptly over pitting potential, leading to nucleation of pits at the surface and the growth of tunnels at special length. When DC was switched off, the potential decreased rapidly to a passive value, leading to stoppage of nucleation and death of tunnels. By this way, the longest tunnel length can be controlled and a non-piercing layer can be obtained. Hence, etching of Al foil at this current is beneficial for maintaining a good mechanical strength.

Kalman-Filtering-Based Frequency Control Strategy Considering Electrolytic Aluminum Load

Traditional thermal power units are continuously replaced by renewable energies,of which fluctuations and intermittence impose pressure on the frequency stability of the power system.Electrolytic aluminum load(EAL)accounts for large amount of the local electric loads in some areas.The participation of EAL in local frequency control has huge application prospects.However,the controller design of EAL is difficult due to the measurement noise of the system frequency and the nonlinear dynamics of the EAL’s electric power consumption.Focusing on this problem,this paper proposes a control strategy for EAL to participate in the frequency control.For the controller design of the EAL system,the system frequency response model is established and the EAL transfer function model is developed based on the equivalent circuit of EAL.For the problem of load-side frequency measurement error,the frequency estimation method based on Kalman-filtering is designed.To improve the performance of EAL in the frequency control,a fuzzy EAL controller is designed.The testing examples show that the designed Kalman-filter has good performance in de-noising the measured frequency,and the designed fuzzy controller has better performance in stabilizing system frequency than traditional methods.

Effect of Shot Peening and Plasma Electrolytic Oxidation on the Intergranular Corrosion Behavior of 7A85 Aluminum Alloy

The effects of shot peening（SP） and plasma electrolytic oxidation（PEO） on the intergranular corrosion behavior of the novel high strength aluminum alloy 7A85（AA 7A85） were investigated by electrochemical polarization and electrochemical impedance tests.The intergranular corrosion mechanism of SP,PEO and PEO combined with sealingtreated AA 7A85 was studied by the metallographic analysis,residual stress testing,X-ray diffractometer analysis and scanning electron microscopy.The results show that AA 7A85-T7452 is very sensitive to intergranular corrosion.SP would significantly improve its intergranular corrosion resistance.This is attributed to the combination action of residual compressive stress and grain refinement.PEO would reduce the largest corrosion depth by 41.6%.Moreover,PEO without sealing did not eliminate the intergranular corrosion due to the existence of the micropores and microcracks in the oxide coating.However,PEO combined with the SiO2sol–gel sealing treatment could effectively protect the AA 7A85-T7452 from intergranular corrosion because of the good corrosion resistance and barrier function of the sealed coating.

A demand side controller of electrolytic aluminum industrial microgrids considering wind power fluctuations

Direct wind power purchase for large industrial users is a meaningful way to improve wind power consumption and decrease industrial production costs.Short-term wind power fluctuations may lead to large-scale wind power curtailment problems.To promote use of wind energy,a demand side control method is proposed based on output regulator theory for a grid-connected industrial microgrid with electrolytic aluminum loads to continuously track and respond to wind power fluctuations.The control model of the EALs and the dominant frequencies of the wind power fluctuation signals are analyzed and incorporated into the demand side control plant.The feedback control signals with active power deviations on the tie-line are used to design the demand side controller.Simulations are conducted for an actual industrial microgrid to validate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed method.The results demonstrate that the proposed controller based on output regulator theory is able to effectively track wind power fluctuations.