A numerical evaluation of the effect of the electro‐magnetic force on bubble flow in aluminium smelting process

Abstract

This paper aims to investigate the effect of electromagnetic forces on bubble flow under an anode using a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model with the volume-of-fluid (VOF) method to capture the gas-liquid interface. Current flow was solved simultaneously to determine the Lorentz forces. As an initial phase of investigation, the investigation was conducted using part of a single anode geometry as a test bed. The CFD model was run with a fixed bubble volume and two anode inclination angles. The effect of Lorentz forces was assessed in terms of bubble sliding velocities, bubble shapes and trajectories.