Improving energy efficiency and productivity in electrowinning of copper

Metallic copper of high purity is an essential element of modern society, used both for domestic purposes and in high-tech industry. According to the trends in world copper consumption, the demand for grade A copper will only increase over time due to the growing population of the planet and an increase in the share of high-tech, copper-containing products in the total production volume. Therefore, the study of electrometallurgical methods of copper production such as copper electrowinning is of great interest. This work is devoted to the issue of increasing the energy efficiency of the copper electrowinning process. The main factors affecting the amount of energy losses during electro deposition of copper are considered and methods for reducing losses are proposed. A simple model for calculating ohmic losses in electrodes of an electrowinning cell is also considered, and the calculated parameters are compared with experiment.