Grant: Collaborative Research and Development Grants

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. A solution is proposed by providing an accurate simulation tool being able to predict the anode quality and adjust the process parameters to compensate the effect of material and process variations providing high quality anodes and reducing the anode failure and disintegration. The simulation is based on a profound understanding of mechanisms governing each production step and the effect of sensitive parameters on physico-chemical properties of baked anodes. At the completion of the proposed project, it is expected that mechanisms of failure and disintegration be better understood and a reliable model be developed leading to monitor and to better control of the process, to adopt an optimum set of parameters of each step, and to take the corrective actions. With an annual production of 3 million tonnes, the Canadian aluminum industry ranks third among world producers. Two multinational giants, Alcan and Alcoa, are well present in Canada playing a leading role in national economy. The scientific and technological achievements of this project will certainly be useful for