Electrorefining of High Carbon Ferromanganese in Molten Salts to Produce Pure Ferromanganese

Abstract

High carbon ferromanganese is used as a starting material to prepare pure ferromanganese by electrorefining in molten salts. High carbon ferromanganese was applied as the anode, molybdenum was the cathode and Ag/AgCl was the reference electrode. The anodic dissolution was investigated by linear polarization in molten NaCl-KCl system. Then potentiostatic electrolysis was carried out to produce pure ferromanganese from high carbon ferromanganese. The cathodic product was determined to be a mixture of manganese and iron by x-ray diffraction (XRD). The content of carbon in the product was analyzed by carbon and sulfur analyzer. The post-electrolysis anode was characterized by scanning electron microscope (SEM). The mechanism of the anode dissolution and the distribution of the main impurity of carbon and silicon after electrolysis were discussed.

Keywords

• high carbon ferromanganese
• electrorefining
• molten salts
• pure ferromanganese