Intercell Busbar Design for Copper Electrowinning

The design of intercell bars is of primary relevance to control electrowinning costs. Two intercell technologies for designing these busbars are presently available: current source (CS) or voltage source. For this research project, we selected CS based on tankhouse operational data that consistently show better performance than its counterpart. Both technologies can be implemented in dogbone or central busbar configurations. Dogbone was chosen because of the better contact distance and larger heatsink area. The proposed design ensures hot swapability. Conventional busbars suffer premature aging, corrosion, and contact deterioration. Industrial samples show these phenomena. Multiphysics finite-element method modeling highlights the origin of this accelerated aging. This work provides design guidelines for S-shaped connectors to overcome previous design flaws. For completeness, the paper includes a design example for an industrial site. The resulting design surpasses standard design practices and secures hot-spot free operation.