Abstract

MOONGO, T.E.  and  MICHAEL, S.. A continuous quality improvement framework for electrowinning current efficiency. J. S. Afr. Inst. Min. Metall. [online]. 2021, vol.121, n.1, pp.21-28. ISSN 2411-9717.  http://dx.doi.org/10.17159/2411-9717/1243/2021.

Electrowinning consumes a substantial amount of electrical energy, and owing to the ever-increasing unit cost of electrical power there is a need to improve current efficiency in the process. This research was carried out to design a continuous quality improvement framework for improving electrowinning current efficiency by applying statistical process control (SPC) on an online industrial copper electrowinning operation. A sequential mixed research methodology was applied and a statistical software package utilized for analysing data. It was concluded that metallurgical short-circuits (hotspots) had the most significant effect on current efficiency. Bringing hotspots under statistical control resulted in a 5.40% improvement in current efficiency, which is equivalent to approximately 74 t of 99.999% pure grade A copper cathode production over a period of 1.5 months.

Keywords : quality; continuous improvement; continuous quality improvement; statistical process control; and current efficiency.

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