Abstract
Unlike pot-to-pot cathode busbars, often protected by the potroom working floor (or gratings), risers are usually exposed to accidental collisions with pot tending machine tools, anode assemblies, crucibles and even heavy vehicles. The tap end corner risers of several pots located immediately after the passageways of the Baie-Comeau Smelter’s Potline D had been damaged throughout the years, which led to the mechanical failure of a considerable amount of the welded plates connecting said risers to the passageway liaison conductors. The retrofit of damaged pot-to-pot conductors is traditionally based on welding techniques, often requiring bypass bridges or potline shutdowns. In the fall of 2015, an integrated Alcoa-Hatch multidisciplinary team succeeded to safely replace one of these risers, without production downtime or auxiliary conductors, by resorting to bolted connections in lieu of standard welded joints. This unique piece of equipment has been operating consistently within target for about 10 months.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Notes
- 1.
A detailed description of the employed modeling approach can be found in [5].
- 2.
Resulting from potential collisions with a pot tending machine (PTM) tool or anode assembly moving downwards.
- 3.
Estimated by means of both temperature and voltage drop readings for all risers and normalized by the actual potline current with an accuracy of 3%.
References
D. Champagne, D.P. Ziegler, A.F. Schneider, D. Richard, in Busbar Circuit Design And Installation For Boosting Already Boosted Pots. Proceedings of the Light Metals (TMS, Warrendale, PA, 2010), pp. 479–84
Aluminum Electrical Conductor Handbook, 3rd edn. (The Aluminum Association, 1989), pp. 13–41
Handbook for Disc Springs (Adolf Schnorr GmbH & Co. KG, 2003), pp. 11–40
R.G. Budynas, J.K. Nisbett, in Shigley’s Mechanical Engineering Design, 9th edn. (McGraw Hill, 2008), pp. 409–59
A.F. Schneider, D. Richard, O. Charette, in Impact of Amperage Creep on Busbars and Electrical Insulation: Thermal-Electrical Aspects. Proceedings of the Light Metals, (TMS, Warrendale, PA, 2011), pp. 525–30
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to express their gratitude to the following people whose support and dedication made this achievement possible: Patricia Gagnon, Richard Lafontaine, Marie-Ève Laframboise, Denis Tanguay, Gino Boucher and Francisco Salgado from Alcoa Baie-Comeau; Patrick Barbieri, François Bouchard, Jean-Pierre Voyer and Guillaume Normandeau from Hatch; Sylvain Deshaies, Louis-Philippe Tanguay and Nelson Fraser from Pro-Métal Plus.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society
About this paper
Cite this paper
Schneider, A.F. et al. (2017). Retrofit of Damaged Corner Risers by Means of Bolted Connections. In: Ratvik, A. (eds) Light Metals 2017. The Minerals, Metals & Materials Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51541-0_89
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51541-0_89
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-51540-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-51541-0
eBook Packages: Chemistry and Materials ScienceChemistry and Material Science (R0)