Shaped cathode for the minimisation of the Hall-Heroult process specific energy consumption

摘要

More and more aluminium smelters are testing new shapes of cathode to reduce their specific energy consumption. This paper compares the cathode voltage drop, the cell magneto-hydrodynamic stability, and the total specific energy consumption for four potential cathode designs. The lowest cathode voltage drop is not a necessary condition to realise the lowest specific energy consumption.