Cathode Wear Investigations in a Laboratory Test Cell

Cathode wear has become an increasing challenge in the aluminium industry due to the use of more graphitized materials. Today, there exist no standard laboratory methods for measuring cathode wear ehere different commercial materials can be ranked. The typical average wear in an electrolysis cell is quite small. The aim of this work was to design a test method where the wear could be accelerated compared to industrial cells. It was focused on polarized tests where the cathode is exposed to electrolyte, which gived higher aluminium carbide solubility. The cathode materials were characterized by microscopy and image analysis.