Analysis on thermal behavior of fluorides and cyanides for heat-treating spent cathode carbon blocks from aluminum smelters by TG/DSC-MS & ECSA®

This paper adopts a novel data-processing method of ECSA (R) based on TG/DSC-MS system to basically study the characteristics of release and conversion of fluorides and cyanides during heat treatment of the spent cathode carbon block (SCCB). All the experiments were conducted at 10 K.min(-1) heating rate and under Ar or Ar-O-2 atmospheres. The results indicate that the release of fluorides was just a steady but slow phase transition process under both Ar and Ar-O-2 atmospheres, which can be comparatively accelerated when the carbon material was burnt. The cyanides were effectively decomposed at high temperature and at Ar-O-2 atmosphere, with around three quarters of the cyanides being converted to the N-2 and nearly a quarter being to the NO. Finally, analysis on the flue gas composition indicates that it had a more complicated composition of CO2, N-2, NO, NO2, HCN under Ar-O-2 atmosphere but only had a composition of CO2 and NO under Ar atmosphere.