Hydrodynamic analysis in three models of electrowinning reactor for silver recovery

In the present work, the hydrodynamic behavior of the electrolyte within the geometry of a presstype reactor was simulated and analyzed; for this purpose, three types of geometries with different dimensions were implemented. The simulation was carried out with COMSOL Multiphysics® software. COMSOL Multiphysics® is a modeling and analysis tool for virtual prototyping of physical phenomena. The equations used in the simulation were the Nernst-Planck equation, which is a mass conservation equation and is an extension of Fick's first diffusion law to include electrostatic forces and the moving mesh of the model; the momentum transport of the fluid flow was described by the steady-state Navier-Stokes equation, and the kinetics of the electrodes was described by the concentration-dependent Butler-Volmer expression. The results obtained showed the correlation between the hydrodynamic properties of the press-type reactor and the concentration of electrorecovered silver; with the current density supplied, concluding that the reactor geometry contributed to the 4% increase in the concentration of electrorecovered Ag (silver) in geometry three, with respect to the others.