Beschreibung
High purity Aluminum and Antimony (> 99.99 %) have nowadays found growing applications in high-tech areas, such as electronics, photovoltaic systems, optical elements, etc. Zone refining process is commonly used as the final purification step in the production of such high purity metals. Improving the refining efficiency as well as production yield and lowering the time consumption are always the research emphases in the field of metal purification via zone refining. Optimization of the relevant experimental factors is the major approach to meet the target, which has been extensively investigated since decades. Those factors mainly include zone length, heater movement velocity, number of passes, and initial concentration of the impurities. But most of optimized parameters are confined to some specific metals. A general rule for the optimum experimental parameters, which can be used in common, is still not clear. This work focused on zone length, considering its important role in the process, affecting not only the zone refining efficiency but also determining the time required to reach ultra distribution of impurities. The typical numerical simulation model proposed by Spim has been applied to optimize this factor. An optimum zone length combination, by which the highest refining efficiency could be achieved in theory, was resulted through a series of comparison analysis by importing the model into the software Matlab. Such zone length combination was then applied in zone refining process of Al and Sb, on one hand for verifying its effectiveness in two metallic systems with largely different physical properties.Furthermore, a huge effort was made to reveal and deal with the specific problems appeared in the purification process of these two metals.
