Production and Performance of Slotted Anodes

摘要

Historically, aluminium producers have been using slotted anodes for smelter technologies that require large size anodes. The slots helped to reduce the thermal stresses in the anodes and thus reduce the risk of cracking and to enable the gas bubbles to better escape from the anode bottom surface, which improves the pot stability and reduces the cell voltage drop.Today, slotted anodes are widely common also in smelters that use midsize anodes, mainly to take advantage of the lower instability level of the pots.To take maximum economical advantage of slotted anodes, numerous aspects need to be considered during anode manufacturing and usage. This paper describes the impact of slotted anodes on anode quality and performance in the pots both for an unadapted as well as an optimized anode production. With this background, the key anode requirements for optimum production figures of the entire smelter are outlined.