Individual Anode Current Monitoring During Aluminum Reduction Cell Power Reduction

In this work, an individual anode current measurement system is installed to monitor the aluminum smelting process in a case study involving power reduction and restoration. In this study, anode current signals, together with the line current and cell voltage, were obtained at a high sampling rate to ensure the dynamic features in the process are captured. It is observed that the cell exhibits “battery” behaviors on stopping the electrolysis process due to the anodes having surface intermediates that have not been transformed into the final gaseous products. It is also found that the currents carried by anodes after the experiment are different from the ones before due to the changed hydrodynamic forces. The analysis results provide more fundamental understandings of the aluminum reduction process and can aid the cell operations such as power modulation.