A GEOMETRICAL CONFIGURATION AND ITS EFFECT ON THE PERFORMANCE OF AN ELECTROCHEMICAL CELL UNDER FREE CONVECTION

Abstract

The effect of positioning or location of the cathode electrode with respect to the surface margin of the electrodeposition electrolyte solution under free convection was numerically studied. The importance of such study arises from the fact that there is no study, according to the author's knowledge regarding the effect of electrode positioning (depth effect) and its effect on the current distribution and on the free convection (absence of forced convection) hence, its effect on mass transfer, that highly appears in the industrial application. It was shown that positioning of cathode near the surface of the solution gave bad results of deposits distribution while moving it downward has comparable results to that when the electrodes are in the middle of the electrolyte. Accordingly, the best configuration was achieved when the cathode location approximately is in the middle of the electrolyte with applied currents-as in this study of about 4.6 mA/cm2 -. According to this study, it was found that there was no effect of free convection on the mass transfer or on the flux of Cu+2 ions and the main contributed mechanism is the diffusion one.

Keywords

• Comsol
• Concentration distribution
• Current distribution
• Electrodeposition
• Electrode positioning