Electrochemical Hydrodynamics Modeling Approach for a Copper Electrowinning Cell

摘要

This study demonstrates a simulation based on a full coupling of electrochemical kinetics with the 3- dimensional transport of ionic species in a flowing electrolyte through a simplified channel cell ofcopper electrowinning. The dependences of ionic electro-transport on the velocity of a stationaryelectrolyte flow were studied using a coupling approach of the electrochemical reaction model. Thepresent model was implemented in a commercially available computational fluid dynamics (CFD)platform, Ansys-CFX, using its customization ability through user-defined functions. The mainparameters characterizing the effect of the turbulent flow of an electrolyte between two planarelectrodes were demonstrated by means of a CFD-based multiphysics simulation approach. Simulationwas carried out for the case of the mass transport controlled copper electrowinning characteristics in astream of acid sulfate electrolyte. This approach was taken into account in the concentration profile atthe electrode surface, to represent the variation of the convective diffusion limited current density as afunction of the flow characteristics and of the applied current density. It was able to predict aconventional current-voltage relation in addition to details of the electrolyte fluid dynamics andelectrochemical variable, such as the flow field, species concentrations, potential, and currentdistributions throughout the galvanostatic cell.