Development Trend of Equipment Used in Copper Electrorefining Tankhouses in China

This paper introduces the equipment used in the tankhouses of China’s copper refining industry in recent years and looks ahead to the future demand features and the trend of new equipment that the copper refining tankhouses hope to use. After the large-scale capacity investment and construction in the past two decades, the problems faced by China’s copper refining tankhouses are no longer just how to increase output, but how to deal with the latest issues brought about by the massive production to further improve production efficiency and competitiveness. The instability of raw material supply leading to unstable production quality; higher requirements for health, safety, and environment in production operation; and the difficulties in implementing full-process management across whole operation process in practice, these new problems have led to the demand for new equipment in tankhouses. There are already many Chinese copper refineries that have started using automated logistics system such as AGV, RGV, and stereoscopic warehouses to transport the cathodes and anodes; tankhouses are also increasingly adopting inspection equipment to monitor their production processes in real time and improve the quality of the final products, as well as the efficiency of the production; the upgrades of existing operating equipment, such as permanent cathode plates and robotic striping machines, are also ongoing. This paper describes in detail the recent appearance of these new equipment and the functions they achieve and the value they bring, the development trends of them reflect the common demand for higher levels of automation, digitalization, and intelligentization in copper electrorefining tankhouses.