Bojarevics, V. ORCID: 0000-0002-7326-7748 and Pericleous, K. ORCID: 0000-0002-7426-9999 (2005) Nonlinear MHD stability of aluminium reduction cells. In: The 15th Riga and 6th PAMIRConference on Fundamental and Applied MHD. MHD-Online, Institute of Physics, University of Latvia, pp. 87-90.

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Abstract

An industrial electrolysis cell used to produce primary aluminium is sensitive to waves at the interface of liquid aluminium and electrolyte. The interface waves are similar to stratified sea layers [1], but the penetrating electric current and the associated magnetic field are intricately involved in the oscillation process, and the observed wave frequencies are shifted from the purely hydrodynamic ones [2]. The interface stability problem is of great practical importance because the electrolytic aluminium production is a major electrical energy consumer, and it is related to environmental pollution rate. The stability analysis was started in [3] and a short summary of the main developments is given in [2]. Important aspects of the multiple mode interaction have been introduced in [4], and a widely used linear friction law first applied in [5]. In [6] a systematic perturbation expansion is developed for the fluid dynamics and electric current problems permitting reduction of the three-dimensional problem to a two dimensional one. The procedure is more generally known as “shallow water approximation” which can be extended for the case of weakly non-linear and dispersive waves. The Boussinesq formulation permits to generalise the problem for non-unidirectionally propagating waves accounting for side walls and for a two fluid layer interface [1]. Attempts to extend the electrolytic cell wave modelling to the weakly nonlinear case have started in [7] where the basic equations are derived, including the nonlinearity and linear dispersion terms. An alternative approach for the nonlinear numerical simulation for an electrolysis cell wave evolution is attempted in [8 and references there], yet, omitting the dispersion terms and without a proper account for the dissipation, the model can predict unstable waves growth only. The present paper contains a generalisation of the previous non linear wave equations [7] by accounting for the turbulent horizontal circulation flows in the two fluid layers. The inclusion of the turbulence model is essential in order to explain the small amplitude self-sustained oscillations of the liquid metal surface observed in real cells, known as “MHD noise”. The fluid dynamic model is coupled to the extended electromagnetic simulation including not only the fluid layers, but the whole bus bar circuit and the ferromagnetic effects [9].

Item Type:	Conference Proceedings
Title of Proceedings:	The 15th Riga and 6th PAMIRConference on Fundamental and Applied MHD
Additional Information:	[2] Paper available online at <http://www.ipul.lv/pamir/index.php?nav=proceedings> and file identifier - riga-pamir-vol.II-87.pdf 17-Jun-2005 15:33 (file size 786K). *** [1] Presentation given under section titled, Aluminium Reduction Cells / Numerical and Experimental Methods - at 11:00-11:20 Thursday June 30th, 2005.
Uncontrolled Keywords:	industrial electrolysis cell, stratified sea layers, interface stability, environmental pollution rate, linear friction law, “shallow water approximation”, “MHD noise”, ferromagnetic effects
Subjects:	T Technology > T Technology (General) T Technology > TP Chemical technology T Technology > TS Manufactures
Pre-2014 Departments:	School of Computing & Mathematical Sciences School of Computing & Mathematical Sciences > Department of Computer Systems Technology School of Computing & Mathematical Sciences > Department of Mathematical Sciences
Related URLs:	Publisher Publisher Publisher Organisation Organisation
Last Modified:	27 Apr 2020 22:56
URI:	http://gala.gre.ac.uk/id/eprint/881

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