Densification of Ni-NiFe204 cermets for aluminum electrolysis

The density of cermet inert anodes in aluminum electrolysis is of great importance. Ni-NiFe2O4 cermets were studied with respect to their densification affected by ball milling time, particle size of raw powders, contents of metallic phase, sintering atmosphere and temperature. The results show that, prolonging ball milling time will increase the density with the optimum value of 150 min; cermets containing 0 - 15 % Ni(mass fraction) have high relative density ranging from 94 % to 96%, but with Ni content increasing, the density slightly decreases; weak reductive atmosphere is favorable to densification; the relative density increases from 80.38% to 96.85% with the sintering temperature increasing from 1 100℃ to 1 300℃ while it decreases at 1 400℃, which may be due to crystal grain coarsening. So the sintering temperature of Ni-NiFe2O4 cerrnets in current work should be controlled at 1 300℃, where the relative density is 96.85 %.