A Critical Appraisal and Review of Aluminium Chloride Electrolysis for the Production of Aluminium

This paper is an attempt to examine the current state of art of aluminium chloride electrolysis through a review of all the available published literature and patents so that this could help the formulation of the plans of work for any serious R&D effort to develop the chloride te&nolcgy in this country. Even though the development of technology for aluminium chloride electrolysis is being carried out in a big way by ALCOA and a few other multinational companies for the past several years, many of the data and information are lacking in published literature and the answers to various critical questions have to be found only through inferences from the meagre information available in patents. It was therefore thought fit to undertake a thorough review of all the basic applied and R & D work that are reported in this field and critically assess the various problems to be tackled to evolve a viable technology. This review confines itself to the electrolytic aspect and those relating to the material preparation will be taken up separately later.