Constellation, le dépôt institutionnel de l'Université du Québec à Chicoutimi

Résumé

In the aluminium industry, the quality of anodes has a direct impact on the production cost, energy consumption, and environmental emissions. Anode properties are strongly affected by the quality of binding between coke and pitch. One of the most promising avenues to enhance this binding is the modification of pitch properties using additives. They help increase the concentration of pitch surface functional groups and consequently improve coke-pitch interactions. The current work was undertaken to establish an additive selection method which would yield improved coke wettability by modified pitch. This article describes the method and presents the results for three different additives. Non-modified and modified pitches were characterized by carrying out wettability tests and FTIR analyses. Coking values (CV) of non-modified and modified pitches were also measured. The results show that it is possible to improve coke-pitch interactions via the utilization of additives.