![\"carbonanode\"](\"https://www.timworstall.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/carbonanode1.jpg\")
The caption on this picture is:
\”An Alcoa Inc. employee changes the glowing hot carbon anode of an electrolytic cell at the company\’s Mt. Holly production plant in Goose Creek, South Carolina. \”
Erm, anodes line the electrolytic cell. Thy\’re not thick blocks like that.
That glowing bit is the sow of aluminium itself.
Just as a check: carbon that is hot enough to glow like that is what…..burning I think we call it?
Update: and guess what? It\’s me that has it wrong. There\’s a surprise, eh? Alcoa tweeted me to point out that I was wrong so clearly this blog is read is high places (says he, desperately trying to find something positive here).
They don’t read you. They just automatically scour the web for references to themselves.
Carbon that’s glowing like that is incandescent – as in early light bulb 🙂
If I remember a school trip to the Alcan smelter properly, the anodes are big lumps of carbon that are dumped into the smelting pot, with the pot itself forming the cathode. They start off all neat and sharp-edged, and gradually get used up and smoothed off and have to be swapped out.
You have no place in the worker’s state that is historically inevitable Mr W. Being wrong is not an option, and as for admittiing it, well it’s the gulag for you…
Unless you are Courageous (c) ™ A Muppet accountant.
desperately trying to find something positive here:
but you’ve already said anode.
I have actually been to Goose Creek.