Modelling and simulation of a copper ele

Increasing demands for energy efficiency and high quality of products advice to use computer aided modeling, simulation and optimization in product development. In this paper the modeling of the copper electrolysis is in the focus. The energy consumption of the copper electrolysis is high. Electrical disturbances – like contact failures and short circuits – even increase the energy consumption and also decrease the quality of produced copper. To gain better understanding and to be able to improve the process a computationally feasible and reliable model of copper electrolysis cell group is of great importance. In this paper a multiphysical FEM model of copper electrolysis cell group is presented. Due to the high complexity of the cell group geometry and physical phenomena, several simplifications and approximations are necessary in order to make the model computationally feasible. A number of simplifications are proposed. Simulation results depend substantially on disturbance location in the cell group. A statistical approach is proposed such that different cell group designs could be compared regardless the disturbance location.