Polar Division of “Norilsk Nickel” MMC, Norilsk, Russia

A. I. Yurev, Executive Officer (Center of Engineering Maintenance of Production), e-mail: yurevai@nk.nornik.ru
A. I. Ryabushkin, Master (Nickel Plant)

This article describes the researches of influence of surface-active substance “Sulphonol” on the behaviour of hydrogen bubbles, released during the nickel electrorefining. Release of hydrogen is decreased with increasing of temperature, which confirms the decreasing of activation energy of ionization of nickel atoms. As a result, there takes place the deceleration of concurrent hydrocarbon release reaction. Dependence of specific volume of hydrocarbon release from concentration of surface-active substance is extremal. Independently of the temperature, the discovered extremum falls at the “Sulphonol” concentration (4 mg/dm³). Increase of concentration of surface active substance has, practically, no influence on amount of bubbles with the range of sizes from 0.035 mm to 0.040 mm. However, the amount of bubbles with the size of >0.04 mm was decreased by 10–20%. Correspondingly, the amount of bubbles with the size of <0.035 mm was decreased by 10–20%. At the same time, correlation coefficients (±0.93) show the clear interconnection between the surface tension decreasing curve and described redistribution of the sizes of bubbles. It is revealed, that the bubbles rising rate is decreased with increasing of concentration of surface-active substance “Sulphonol”.

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