The electrorefining of aluminum alloy (A360) in ionic liquids at low temperatures has been investigated. The ionic liquid electrolyte was prepared by mixing anhydrous AlCl3 and 1-Butyl-3- methylimidazolium chloride (BMIC) in appropriate proportions. The effect of the cell voltage temperature, and the composition of the electrolyte on the electrorefining process has been studied. The characterization of the deposited aluminum was performed using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) techniques. The influence of experimental parameters such as cell voltage and concentration of AlCl3 in the electrolyte on the deposit morphology was discussed. The composition of the aluminum deposits was analyzed using X-ray fluorescence spectrometer (XRF). Aluminum deposits with purity higher than 99.89 % were obtained. At a cell voltage of 1.0 V vs. Al/Al(III), the energy consumption was about 3 kWh/kg-Al. The main advantage of the process is low energy consumption compared to the existing industrial aluminum refining process
Thermodynamic properties of 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium chloride (C 4 mim[Cl]) ionic liquid were determined using thermogravimetric (TG) differential thermal analysis (DTA). A new method called DTA mass-difference baseline, was used to measure the heat capacity and enthalpy change of phase transformation of ionic liquid from DTA curves. Based on this, the changes in standard enthalpy, entropy, and Gibbs energy were determined. The results show that standard enthalpy and entropy changes of C 4 mim[Cl] increase nonlinearly with increasing temperature, while the standard Gibbs energy change decreases nonlinearly with increasing temperature within the temperature range studied (298-453 K). The standard enthalpy of melting and enthalpy of vaporization were determined to be 0.93 and 11.07 kJ/mol, respectively.
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