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On-line Monitoring of Individual Anode Currents to Understand and Improve the Process Control at Alouette

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Light Metals 2015

Abstract

In 2014, Alouette acquired a system to monitor the on-line anode current on two pots. This system, developed and supplied by WIT, reports all anodes current and the pot voltage for every second of operation. The following paper describes some of the resulting improvements that apply to the process control of the aluminum electrolysis cell.

Current monitoring of the anodes easily indicates the generation of localized anode effects (AE) prior to their propagation into a “voltage triggered” AE. Basic concepts, algorithms, results and optimization to improve the detection rate are discussed in the first part of the paper.

Moreover, AE are directly influenced by the alumina distribution in the cell. A better understanding of the dissolution patterns based on the feeder’s position was achieved by using the monitoring system.

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© 2015 TMS (The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society)

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Dion, L., Lagacé, CL., Evans, J.W., Victor, R., Kiss, L.I. (2015). On-line Monitoring of Individual Anode Currents to Understand and Improve the Process Control at Alouette. In: Hyland, M. (eds) Light Metals 2015. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-48248-4_122

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